Boosting Chinese Healthcare Service Providers' Utilization of Behavioral and Pharmacotherapy Interventions for Cigarette Smoking Cessation by 'WeChat WeQuit' Program

Previous studies have been showed that providing behavioral and pharmacotherapy interventions for cigarette smoking patients was effective but rare among Chinese healthcare service providers. In order to minimize the huge gap between the shortage and demand for smoking cessation training program and smoking cessation service, this 'WeChat WeQuit' smoking cessation training program has been designed to assess whether it will increase Chinese healthcare service providers' utilization of behavioral and pharmacotherapy interventions for cigarette smoking cessation or not.

In this single-blind, randomized trial, about 2200 HSPs will be randomly selected (by randomizeR, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=randomizeR) to 8-week intervention (behavioral and pharmacotherapy interventions for cigarette smoking patients to help them quit smoking) group or control group that only communicates without any standard smoking cessation practices related messages, and follow-up to 52 weeks. The trial will be carried out in into two phases, the first phase is the pilot study (n=200, 8-week intervention and follow-up to 16 weeks) and the second is the main study (n=2000, 8-week intervention and follow-up to 52 weeks). It is hypothesized that 'WeChat WeQuit' training program will improve Chinese HSPs' utilization of behavioral and pharmacotherapy interventions for cigarette smoking cessation and increase quit rate for smoking patients.