Email provides new tool to help smokers quit

Smoking cessation can be a daunting task for many smokers—but help could be found in your email inbox. An American Cancer Society study, published in Tobacco Control, found personalized and frequent emails were as effective in helping patients quit smoking as many leading medications.

Taking advantage of modern means of communication patients use in everyday life, researchers tested the effectiveness of three types of email messages on smoking cession. By choosing to focus on email messaging, researchers were able to take advantage of the daily interaction of emails, provide content within the email and eliminate the need for additional websites. Personalized emails provided additional support by tailoring messaged toa  patient’s individual needs.

With 1,070 smokers enrolled in the study, researchers assigned participants to either receive 27 personalized cessation emails, three to four personalized emails with links to downloadable booklets or a single non-tailored email. All emails contained links to quitting resources. Results were calculated at one, three and six months.

Results across all three follow-up times showed patients receiving 27 personalized emails had a 34 percent cessation rate, while participants receiving three to four emails had a rate of 30.8 percent. Single email participants were measured at 25.8 percent.

"The overall quit rate for the main intervention group is about equivalent to the abstinence rates achieved by the most effective medication for cessation," said J. Lee Westmaas, PhD, strategic director of tobacco control research at the American Cancer Society, and lead author on the study. "It appears that the personalization in the emails and their frequency—initially every day then tapering off—gave people the assurance that someone cared about them and wanted them to succeed. They were receiving daily or nearly-daily guidance about how to deal with issues that come up in their quit attempt, made possible by a relatively simple computer tailoring algorithm."