By Sara Heath
- Text message patient outreach and coaching has proven effective for promoting healthy behavior change in young adults, according to a new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The text message campaign helped nearly a quarter of young adults quit vaping, while only about 18 percent of those not receiving text messages made the same step toward healthy behavior change.
Nicotine use among young people is becoming a bigger problem again, with the rise of vaping precipitating an increase in nicotine dependence. But considering the novelty of vaping devices, the researchers said there’s a limited evidence base suggesting how to motivate healthy behavior change and smoking cessation.
Text message patient outreach and patient motivation could be effective, particularly with this population, the researchers posited. Cellphone ownership is nearly ubiquitous, especially among young people.
What’s more, this is exactly the medium on which young people want to be reached. Young people largely favor text message communication in other walks of life, and for smoking cessation particularly text messages can be anonymous and discreet, the team said.
An analysis of smoking cessation data from just over 2,500 young adults who vape showed that to be the case. Young adults who got patient motivation text messages encouraging vaping cessation were more likely to follow through on that healthy behavior change than those who did not receive text messages.
Every study participant received monthly text messages assessing their vaping status, but those in the intervention arm of the study got a little more support. Specifically, intervention participants got regular text messages as part of a This Is Quitting campaign. The campaign offered regular social support and some cognitive behavioral coping techniques for those quitting.
After seven months of the text message campaign, 24 percent of those receiving the This Is Quitting campaign messages had quit vaping. For those not receiving the motivational texts, only 18 percent reported quitting vaping.
What’s more, none of the participants’ sociodemographnics swayed the efficacy of the text messages.
“The superiority of the intervention was consistent across all demographic variables and vaping characteristics examined, including nicotine dependence, social influences to vape, and other substance use,” the research team explained.
In other words, the researchers did not find the text messages worked better in patients with only mild nicotine dependence, or better in males versus females. The text messages were effective across all levels of dependence and all demographic traits.
The researchers also noted the overall effectiveness of text messages, whether they were the monthly check-ins or the more extensive patient motivation campaign. This warrants further investigation, the team said. While the researchers deemed both interventions a success, it is hard to know this considering the limited evidence base for vaping cessation strategies among young people.
That said, they did posit a few reasons for the high performance. For one thing, the researchers recruited study participants in the days leading up to New Year’s Day, a time when people typically resolve to quit smoking and adopt healthy behavior change.
Additionally, the assessment took place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were more cut off from their social circles than normal. This may have impacted the social variable to vaping and smoking, the researchers said.
This study may lay the groundwork for future developments in text message patient motivation and outreach, the team said.
“Text messaging is a scalable and cost-efficient approach to delivering vaping cessation treatment on a population basis,” the researchers concluded. “These results establish a benchmark of effectiveness for other vaping cessation programs and begin to fill an important gap in understanding how to help young people quit e-cigarettes.”
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May 20, 2021
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Text Message Patient Outreach Supports Healthy Behavior Change - PatientEngagementHIT.com
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