PhD-student: Olav Nilsen

Project description

The online smoking cessation program “slutta.no” utilizes the possibilities in using the Internet’s potential for reaching people and tailoring for simulating personal follow up. All though the program has been proven efficacious, there is a big challenge regarding low adherence to the program.

Problems regarding low adherence have traditionally been an important issue for health interventions and even more so in Internet-based interventions in general, and for smoking cessation specifically.

The use of mobile phones and SMS has been suggested as one possible way of increasing adherence to programs like slutta.no. The phd-project aims to develop an SMS module for slutta.no and to investigate whether it has an impact on adherence and/or quit rates through two randomized controlled trials.

There will be two different levels of SMS functionality introduced; one with a on-demand component, and one without this on-demand component. One of the trials will take place in a health care setting, recruiting patients and hospital employees. For this study it is an additional goal to investigate whether such a program, including recruitment procedures, is suitable for a sustainable service in this setting.

Contact information

Olav Nilsen, telephone +47 901 18 072 and e-mail: olav.nilsen@telemed.no