Smoking Cessation, Tobacco Use
Conditions
Keywords
conversational agent, virtual assistant, digital health, artificial intelligence, large language model, ChatGPT, adolescent
Brief summary
The goal of this pilot trial is to develop and examine the trial feasibility and acceptability of a chatbot for smoking cessation in youth smokers. Specific aims include: 1. To assess how many youth smokers accept the invitation to participate in the trial 2. To assess the retention of the participants through 6 months after treatment initiation 3. To assess the acceptability of the chatbot in terms of participants' compliance and usability rating of the chatbot. 4. To estimate the intervention effect on abstinence outcomes 5. To explore the participants' perception and experiences in the chatbot
Interventions
BEHAVIORALChatbot counselling
Access to a chatbot that provides smoking cessation counselling based on the 5A's (Ask, Advice, Assess, Assist, Arrange follow-up) and 5R's (Risk, Relevance, Rewards, Relevance, Roadblocks, Repetition) tobacco intervention models from baseline to 3-month post-baseline.
BEHAVIORALPeer counselling
Usual treatment provided by the Youth Quitline, i.e., telephone counselling for smoking cessation based on the 5As and 5Rs models delivered by trained peer counsellors at baseline and 1 week, 1 month and 3 months post-baseline
Sponsors
Health and Medical Research Fund
The University of Hong Kong
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
No minimum to 25 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
1. Hong Kong residents aged 25 years or younger 2. Used a tobacco product in the past 30 days, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, heated tobacco products, etc. 3. Able to communicate in Chinese 4. Own a smartphone with internet access
Exclusion criteria
1. Diagnosed with a mental disease or on regular psychotropic drugs, or 2. Participating in other ongoing smoking cessation studies.
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Biochemically-validated tobacco abstinence | 6 months after randomisation | Defined as a negative result of the iScreen OFD test for measuring salivary cotinine (with a cut-off of lower than 30ng/mL) |
| Recruitment rate | Through recruitment completion, about 9 months | Number of participants divided by the number of eligible subjects |
| Retention rate | 6 months | Number of participants completed the follow-up divided by the number of participants |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Self-reported 7-day point-prevalence tobacco abstinence | 3 months after randomisation | Being completely smoke-free in the past 7 days |
| Self-reported 50% smoking reduction | 3 months after randomisation | Smoking reduction by at least half of the baseline daily number of cigarettes in continued smokers |
| Self-reported 30-day point-prevalence tobacco abstinence | 3 months after randomisation | Being completely smoke-free in the past 30 days |
| Self-reported 24-hour quit attempt | 3 months after randomisation | Serious attempt to quit smoking for 24 hours or longer in daily smokers |
Countries
Hong Kong
Outcome results
None listed