Going beyond the relapse peak on social network smoking cessation programmes ::ChatBot opportunities

Research question: A social network programme called J’arrête de fumer was set up in 2016 in the six French-speaking cantons of Switzerland. It consists of Facebook groups where people agree on a date to quit smoking. A peak of relapse appears during the first three weeks of the programme. This research aims to explore the feasibility of building a Chatbot to help people to get over this peak in future iterations of the programme. Methods: It has been shown that the urge to smoke may be one of the reasons for relapses. Being able to distract users from the idea of smoking during these phases would help them to get through these three first weeks. Due to the large number of participants, a human intervention within the craving time frame is difficult to achieve, but such a constraint would be easier to overcome with ChatBots. Results: A ChatBot for the Telegram platform has been developed. It offers five different modules to overtake the time frame where the urge to smoke is greatest. Some of these modules, such as motivating comments and factual information, are already well used, but some others are less widely explored, like helping scientific research by classifying images or putting people in touch with each other as another form of distraction. Conclusion: ChatBots offer interesting opportunities for helping smoking cessation communities, as they would help participants during craving time frames and would be able to handle the large number of participants

An innovative smoking cessation program using Facebook reaching 7´000 Swiss smokers

Background Tobacco smoking causes multiple diseases, premature mortality and is a major public health threat. In Switzerland, smoking prevalence is high (25%) but stable since 2011. Half of smokers want to quit but they underuse effective smoking cessation services. Programs using social networks are a new smoking cessation approach potentially able to reach many smokers. We designed, implemented and tested an innovative large-scale smoking cessation program using Facebook for 7 months in 2016 in 4 states of Switzerland. Methods 7008 smokers were enrolled within 2 months through Facebook advertising. The program created 4 communities of smokers of each state interacting on a Facebook page. 2400 Facebook publications, which triggered 67000 comments, stimulated interaction. After a 3-week preparation providing information and advice, all participants quit smoking together on March 21, 2017. Then, they received mutual support from peers and professional help daily during 6 months. Professional support included 3 levels: community managers watching and regulating the activity; counsellors providing personalised smoking cessation counselling; physicians providing personalised counselling for complex and medical issues. Personalised counselling at 2 nd and 3 rd levels included help for cessation plans, relapse prevention strategies and use of nicotine replacement. Evaluation surveys were conducted at 1 week, 3 and 6 months among 1270 participants, of whom 37% responded. Results 81% of participants attempted to stop smoking. At 6 months,13.5% reported total smoking abstinence while 19% were trying to quit despite occasional consumption. Smoking cessation was not associated with socio-demographic factors. The community dynamics, a strong intention to quit and relapse prevention strategies predicted success while high nicotine dependence, exposure to smokers and negative affect were negative predictors. Conclusions A large-scale smoking cessation program using Facebook, providing mutual and professional support seems effective to reach large numbers of smokers, stimulate smoking cessation attempts and promote smoking abstinence at 6 months