London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The School is co-ordinating a randomised controlled trial of mobile phone text messaging to support young people trying to give up smoking.

The trial group for txt2stop is based in the School's Nutrition and Public Health Interventions Research Unit, and is run in collaboration with the University of Auckland and QUIT smoking cessation charity. The initiative is being funded by the UK Medical Research Council.

Most people who are killed by tobacco started smoking as teenagers, and smoking contributes to the death of one in two of those who continue to smoke past the age of 35. Many young people would like to quit but there are few interventions to help them.

Mobile phones allow personalised smoking cessation support to be delivered cheaply, and wherever the person is located. A similar trial in New Zealand, STOMP (stop smoking with mobile phones) on which txt2stop is based, found a doubling in quit rates at six weeks. The txt2stop trial has been set up following positive feedback from a series of focus groups and a pilot study involving 200 participants (who were recruited using radio adverts) and which achieved 92% long-term follow up.

Carrie Free, Clinical Lecturer in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene, who is co-ordinating the trial group, says: 'I am very excited to be involved in this innovative means of providing smoking cessation support. The results of our pilot trial were very promising. This important new trial will tell us if the txt2stop programme can help smokers quit and stay quit in the long term.'

The trial will involve 5,800 participants, who must be sixteen or over, currently smoking cigarettes daily and interested in quitting. They must also be a current owner of a mobile phone and familiar with text messaging capabilities. Participants will be recruited over two years, Follow up will be at four weeks, and six months.