Become an Ex

On previous posts I’ve talked about good websites for helping smokers quit:

Can smoking cessation internet sites help you to quit? 4/21/07
http://www.healthline.com/blogs/smoking_cessation/2007/04/can-smoking-cessation-internet-sites.html

There are quite a few good ones, and so far my favorite is at www.quitnet.com .

But I recently checked out a fairly new one and was very impressed. Its at www.becomeanex.org . It has been funded by a coalition on public health agencies, and appears to have been really well put together and is really easy to use. One of its main selling points is its emphasis on quitting smoking as a process, and its recognition that it is not all over in a month. So this site presents quitting as a process, provides loads of useful tips and advice, and is particularly good at helping you link with networks of other smokers for added support. The site makes good use of new technologies to make it easy to register, easy to communicate with other smokers trying to quit, and fairly easy to ask a question not just of others trying to quit, but also of recognized experts, like Dr Richard Hurt of the Mayo Clinic.

I found it very simple to register. You can set up your own profile, add your photo and details if you want (or not if you don’t), and there are plenty of subgroups you can join, made up of people with a particular thing in common (e.g. living in Texas, or using Chantix). The only slight problem I had was that when I clicked on some of the video components they didn’t all run smoothly. That may have just been a problem with my PC as I’m a bit technologically challenged. I believe this site is fairly new, (launched March, 2008) but I think it looks like it could be very helpful to tobacco users thinking about quitting.

Check it out and let me know what you think.
www.becomeanex.org

Labels: becomeanex, cessation, cigarette smoking, jonathan foulds, website

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Can Smoking Cessation Internet Sites Help You Quit?

Many smokers use the internet to seek help in stopping smoking. Thousands of websites (including this one) provide basic information and advice on stopping smoking, and over 30 focus on providing direct smoking cessation assistance (e.g. a tailored quit plan) rather than just information and advice. So do these smoking cessation websites actually help smokers to quit?

When one considers some of the advantages of the internet (easy access, anonymity, lack of face-to-face contact etc), one can immediately also see some of the challenges in evaluating smoking cessation websites. For example, how do you follow-up on people who visited a website anonymously, in order to find out if they quit smoking? Research on this topic has only recently started, but there are already some promising studies suggesting that some smoking cessation websites boost the smokers’ chances of quitting. A recent study by Dr Lynn Swartz at the Oregon Center for Applied Science compared one particular internet site with no intervention. They found that smokers given access to the smoking cessation internet site were roughly twice as likely to have quit smoking three months later. Another recent study by Dr Joanne Pike at University of Texas Health Science Center compared utilization and quit rates at 5 interactive websites and one static website, all of which aimed to help smokers quit. They found that some of the interactive websites had much higher participation rates than others, and that this was associated with the amount of interactivity available on the site. Sites containing a lot of interactive functions also tended to have more participants succeed in quitting smoking.

Many of the websites offer the chance to view some of the basic information pages immediately but require visitors to complete an online registration process (and possibly pay a fee) before being given full access to the more useful interactive features on the site. One of the top smoking cessation websites can be found at: www.quitnet.com . This site offers a range of interactive features including “chat rooms”, and “ask-the-expert” functions, as well as online “wizards” that automatically calculate how much money you have saved since you quit smoking. This site is widely used around the world, so that at any given moment there will be hundreds or thousands of people visiting the site for help to quit.

The advantages of these interactive smoking cessation websites are that they are available 24/7, from the comfort of your own home, are generally free or low cost, and can put you in touch with a whole community of people going through the same process. Website assistance can also be used in addition to other methods (e.g. counseling and/or medication). Generally the more help and support you can get, the more likely you are to succeed in quitting. If you found any websites particularly helpful (or unhelpful), let me know, so I can pass it on to others. Best of luck.

Labels: cessation, online, Smoking, website

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