Abstract:
Although adolescent tobacco use has declined in the last 10 years, African American high school seniors’ past 30-day use has increased by 12 %, and as they age they are more likely to report lifetime use of tobacco. Very few urban youth are enrolled in evidenced-based smoking prevention and cessation programming. Therefore, we tested a text messaging smoking cessation intervention designed to engage urban youth through an automated texting program utilizing motivational interviewing-based peer network counseling. We recruited 200 adolescents (90.5 % African American) into a randomized controlled trial that delivered either the experimental intervention of 30 personalized motivational interviewing-based peer network counseling messages, or the attention control intervention, consisting of text messages covering general (non-smoking related) health habits. All adolescents were provided smart phones for the study and were assessed at baseline, and at 1, 3, and 6 months post intervention. Utilizing repeated measures general linear models we examined the effects of the intervention while controlling for race, gender, age, presence of a smoker in the home, and mental health counseling. At 6 months, participants in the experimental condition significantly decreased the number of days they smoked cigarettes and the number of cigarettes they smoked per day; they significantly increased their intentions not to smoke in the future; and significantly increased peer social support among girls. For boys, participants in the experimental condition significantly reduced the number of close friends in their networks who smoke daily compared to those in the control condition. Effect sizes ranged from small to large. These results provide encouraging evidence of the efficacy of text messaging interventions to reduce smoking among adolescents and our intervention holds promise as a large-scale public health preventive intervention platform
My opinion:
This program is similar with the one program that I proposed before, with several differences. The program using text messages (SMS) that I proposed is mainly to advertise the existence of smoking cessation class in school with other purpose to broadcast the risk/danger of smoking. Instead the program in this journal is intended as the cessation program itself, without classes or clinics that helps students in stopping smoking.
This differences happens because in reality, the needs to help cessation of smoking is different in each individual, and Indonesian's students tend to insist on it's principal, especially because smoking promotes friendship. Then it's impossible to cater to those needs using SMS alone, and also the cost to manually send SMS to each individual will be paramount. Perhaps the program on this journal will be able to apply if more governmental and NGOs that sponsor the program, in meanwhile it's rather impossible.
As I stated in paragraphs above, the program in this journal maybe will be effective in proper conditions, unfortunately it will not be effective if it is applied now in Jogjakarta.
Reference of Journal:
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