Internet health research center: smoking, Latinos, &amp; the Web
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: Faculty from the School of Medicine of the University of California, San Francisco propose to create the “San Francisco Internet Health Research Center.” This proposal is intended to fund the first study under the Center’s umbrella.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 One of the major priorities of the Center will be reaching populations that have little access to health information, especially those with little access to the Internet. Thus, though we fully intend the interventions developed by the Center to be heavily used by individuals from any ethnic group already adept at using the Internet, our specialty will be to pioneer interventions that are accessible by individuals who currently do not have Internet access, including development of interventions in languages other than English, and methods of providing access to populations that currently do not use computers or the Web.
 
 
 
 
 
 The Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program has funded the UCSF/SFGH Latino Mental Health Research Program’s “Spanish/English Web Site for Smoking Cessation Trials” since 1998. With TRDRP’s support, we have already recruited well over 5,500 English speakers, and 3,500 Spanish speakers from 89 countries into our smoking cessation studies. We would now like the TRDRP to be the agency that provides the funds for the first study of the Internet Health Research Center at UCSF. We will use this support to leverage funding for the full-fledged Center from additional public and private sources.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 This proposal addresses TRDRP’s Mission of helping build the infrastructure for research into tobacco control, and the Primary Area of tobacco-related health disparities among California’s diverse populations.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 SPECIFIC AIMS
 
 1. To plant the seed for the “San Francisco Internet Health Research Center” by conducting its first study.
 
 2. To ensure that the Center’s work from its inception is done in both English and other languages (so that smokers of all ethnicities are able to participate and benefit from the methods being tested), and that it includes a focus on disparities. Thus we will recruit a minimum of 480 Spanish speakers and 480 English speakers and specifically recruit a substantial number of Latinos as part of the study. 
 
 The main study will compare four web-administered methods to stop smoking:
 
 1) A standard smoking cessation guide, the “Guia para Dejar de Fumar” (Guia)
 
 2) Guia + email reminders to use the site
 
 3) Guia + email reminders + mood management lessons
 
 4) Guia + email reminders + mood management + a “virtual group”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 We will ensure that each condition has a similar distribution of men and women, and of individuals with histories of clinical depression, so that when we compare the quit rates across the four conditions, these characteristics of the participants are accounted for. We hypothesize that the additional components will increase quit rates over the standard smoking cessation alone.
 
 
 
 
 
 We also propose to study different methods of recruiting Latinos into the study, especially those with low incomes, so that Latinos in California and the U.S. can also benefit from this resource. These methods will include community outreach efforts in San Francisco. Conditions with the best quit rates will be included in future studies and made available to smokers.