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More and more methods are springing up to encourage smokers to quit. Recently in China, researchers developed the “WeChatWequit” program on the popular WeChat messaging application, inspired by the cognitive-behavioral approach.
China has about 300 million smokers and is one of the countries that consumes the most tobacco in the world. To encourage Chinese people to quit smoking, WeChat, a popular messaging app in China, has launched a new feature called WeChatWeQuit. This digital aid has been the subject of a study by Chinese, American and British researchers to assess its effectiveness. Their work has been published in the journal eClinicalMedicine.
Weaning aid integrated into a messaging application
This functionality integrated into the messaging application aims to support people wishing to quit smoking. The program works on the principle of the experimental cognitive approach. This method aims to change the thoughts and behaviors that lead people to smoke. The program has two different sections.
- The first is to “prepare to quit smoking”: it involves motivational messages, identifying smoking habits, sources of support, teaching relaxation techniques, etc.
- The second part concerns the decisive step, which is to quit smoking and prevent relapses. She gives advice on coping with the side effects of withdrawal such as weight gain.
A smoking abstinence rate multiplied by 4
The study was conducted between March 2020 and November 2022 on 2000 smokers of all sexes and ages combined. All participants were willing to quit within a month. They were divided into two groups. In the first group, participants followed the WeChat WeQuit program and received three to five messages in the first four weeks, then one to three messages until twelve weeks. Audios as well as relaxing images were available at any time of the day from their account. According to the researchers, 80% of the information was consulted by the participants of the first group. In the second group, only control messages were sent to the participants.
In order to assess the effectiveness of these methods, the latter were followed up 26 weeks after the date of cessation. And the results look promising. “This study shows that the biochemically verified 26-week continuous abstinence rate (often considered the gold standard for verification of smoking cessation) in the intervention group (nearly 12%) was over four times higher than that of the control group“, indicates the study.
Researchers hope to further develop this feature to enable smoking cessation. In the United Kingdom, researchers had succeeded in designing a application smoking cessation program powered by AI.