Assessment of Smoking Cessation in a Publicly Available Cessation Smartphone Application

Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. and causes multiple cancers. Approximately 34 million U.S. adults currently smoke cigarettes, but over half of all smokers attempt to quit smoking each year. However, only about 6% quit successfully, in part, because many smokers make unassisted quit attempts, due to the lack of accessibility of cessation programs. Mobile health (mHealth) smoking cessation programs delivered through smartphone applications ('apps') can potentially reach a large number of smokers in the U.S., as 81% of U.S. adult smokers own a smartphone. The National Cancer Institute hosts Smokefree.gov, a suite of free, publicly available smoking cessation resources. In addition to web based and text-messaging resources, Smokefree.gov launched the quitSTART smartphone app in 2013, which is a publicly available smoking cessation app.

Participants in this study will be asked to complete a pre-cessation assessment, then download, install, and try to quit smoking using the smoking cessation smartphone application, quitSTART. Participants will be asked to use quitSTART for 4 weeks. Participants will also be asked to complete online surveys 2 and 4 weeks after the start of the study. To understand how people are using quitSTART, the investigators will collect quitSTART usage data from all participants (for example, how often someone opens quitSTART during the study period and what specific features someone uses).