Spanish/English web site for smoking cessation trials
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: Research groups at the University of California, San Francisco (the San Francisco General Hospital Latino Mental Health Research Program and the Medical Effectiveness Research Center for Diverse Populations), and at Stanford University will jointly develop a computer-based site on the World Wide Web (WWW) to test how best to help smokers to quit and stay quit. The computerized information will be available in Spanish and English.
 
 
 
 
 
 The long-term goal of these researchers is to develop ways to use the technological potential of the Web to provide and evaluate treatments for smoking and other health problems. This proposal has two aims: 1) to build the first bilingual web site to carry out this type of study, and 2) to actually carry out a study to help Spanish- and English-speaking adolescents and young adults to quit, and to test which of several methods works best. Their proposal addresses the TRDRP's 1998 priority area "Nicotine Addiction and its Treatment," as well as its ongoing priority of making sure that the people of California are included in its studies, even if they are racially and linguistically diverse.
 
 
 
 
 
 Building the bilingual web site: The WWW can offer low-cost information on how to quit to smokers. In addition, once on the web, smokers interested in helping research learn what works best when quitting, can send their information to the researchers automatically, without having to send questionnaires through the mail. Once the web site is developed, it can automatically provide information to many people with very little extra cost, so more people can benefit from the information developed for these studies. Having the information and the questions in Spanish and English will make it possible for the many people who understand Spanish better than English to take part in the study and to have access to the latest information. This study will tell us how many Latinos prefer to use the Spanish version. We can then begin to find ways to provide access to the web to more Latinos, including ways that do not require having a computer.
 
 
 
 
 
 Doing the study to test which methods help most people quit. The study will build on work already done by the researchers in which they provided Spanish-language information on how to quit smoking through the mail. They found that twice as many people were able to quit if they were taught both how to quit and how to manage their mood than if they were only taught how to quit. They also found that people who had been depressed in the past were more likely to quit using the mood management methods. The researchers will now test whether they will get the same results by using the web: 1600 smokers will take part in the study, 400 in each of four types of treatment: 1) how to quit, 2) how to quit and how to manage your mood when quitting, and each of these either 3) on your own, 4) or with a "virtual group" in which the smoker uses the web to communicate with other smokers trying to quit. Participant s will report whether they are smoking at 3, 6, and 12 months into the study.