‘Unpreachiness’ helps women kick the nicotine habit on line

By Cindy Fox Aisen

Anna McDaniel, associate professor at the Indiana University School of Nursing at IUPUI and an affiliated scientist at the Regenstrief Institute for Health Care, has developed and tested A New Beginning, an interactive smoking-cessation computer program targeting low-income women. It appears to be getting its message across; more than half the women (52 percent) who were exposed to the program reported that they cut down on smoking within one week and 15 percent reported that they tried to quit smoking in that first week.

The interactive computer program personalizes the process by allowing an individual to respond according to her level of interest in kicking the nicotine habit. The computer program fills the gap in a setting where busy doctors and nurses often are unable to spend much time with their patients discussing the specific reasons why the individual smokes and how best to motivate her to stop smoking.

McDaniel developed and tested A New Beginning as part of her two-year post-doctoral fellowship in informatics at the Regenstrief Institute. Individuals were asked to respond to visual prompts by touching the screen. McDaniel found that the 100 low-income women in the study enjoyed the simple computer interaction. What they liked the best, she reported, was that the computer program was able to provide them with information specifically tailored to the reasons they smoked. Factors motivating these women to smoke included stress, desire to stay thin and frequently finding themselves in situations conducive to smoking. User’s comments and actions--thinking about quitting or actually quitting smoking--showed that interactive smoking cessation computer technology specifically targeted to women with little if any previous computer exposure is feasible in a primary care setting.

A New Beginning helped each woman to understand why she smoked in order to assist her in determining what might help her stop smoking. For example, touching the screen to select smoking serves as a stress reliever, produced a screen on methods of stress reduction. Touching the screen to select social reasons for smoking made another screen appear discussing the pros and cons of that rationale.

Video testimonials from former female smokers (perceived as peers by the study subjects) incorporated into the computer program inspired confidence in participant’s ability to stop smoking, the study subjects reported. Several participants said they appreciated the “nonpreachiness” of these peers and the informative tenor of the program. Several said that past health-care providers had not discussed smoking with them or had done so in a manner that was perceived as condescending. “Not a scare tactic in sight,” said one of the smokers about the computer material.

Data collected at the end of the study showed that 52 percent of the women reduced the number of cigarettes they smoked daily, 40 percent had discussed quitting with family; 24 percent read additional material about quitting smoking; 15 percent talked to a physician about quitting and 6 percent inquired about a smoking cessation program--all important “first steps” in quitting smoking. .

This research was conducted in affiliation with the Mary Margaret Walther Program for Cancer Care Research.

http://walther.org