This is Quitting, a quit vaping program launched by The Truth Initiative has reportedly helped almost 500,000 youth and young adults quit vaping nicotine.
Results from a clinical trial reported that This is Quitting increased vaping cessation rates among young adults aged 18-24 by nearly 40%, compared to a control group. Published in the academic journal JAMA Internal Medicine, the study found that “a text message vaping cessation program is effective in promoting abstinence among [young adult] e-cigarette users.”
“In this randomized clinical trial of 2588 [young adult] e-cigarette users, at 7 months post-randomization abstinence rates were 24.1% among participants assigned to the text message intervention and 18.6% among participants assigned to an assessment-only control, which is a statistically significant difference,” reported the research team.
A quit-smoking app tested for vaping cessation
Meanwhile, Fred Hutch public health researcher Dr. Jonathan Bricker, will be adapting and testing an adult quit-smoking app to help kids under 18 quit vaping. Supplementary support from the Hutch’s Reservoir Fund, will develop and test, the first-ever mobile smartphone app to help teens stop vaping nicotine via a randomized controlled trial. Meanwhile the study will be funded by a two-year grant from the NorthShore University HealthSystem Research Institute at the University of Chicago.
“There are currently no proven programs to help youth stop vaping,” says Bricker. “Despite all we’ve heard about how much teens vape, there’s no trial out there testing apps. Vaping is easy to hide and it’s become more prevalent among teenagers, including groups of kids who were historically less likely to smoke cigarettes like athletes and academically oriented kids.”
Bricker plans to adapt a digital therapeutics app he designed to help adults quit smoking cigarettes, Quit2Heal, into an age-appropriate app to help younger people stop vaping. He plans to conduct a randomized controlled trial next year, with the aim of comparing his newly designed program with the National Cancer Institute’s program, SmokeFreeTeen.