Reaching Latinos Through Social Media and SMS for Smoking Cessation

Abstract

In South Texas, smoking rates among young Latino adults aged 18–29 are high (23.2%–25.7%). This is a serious public health problem, yet few are reached by services to help them quit smoking. Cellular phones have an extraordinary potential for assisting smoking cessation by providing access to peer modeling and social reinforcement for behavior change. Quitxt is a bilingual text-messaging and mobile media service designed at UT Health San Antonio to help young adults quit smoking. Text messages include links to web content and YouTube videos with peer modeling of reasons and skills to quit smoking. Quitxt was promoted in South Texas via social media advertising and other recruitment channels. An assessment of the program included 798 participants with a mean age of 29 years; 57% were males and 36% identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino. The mean number of cigarettes consumed per day was 11.5. Abstinence was assessed at 2, 4, and 7 months; at the 7-month follow up, 21% reported abstinence. This is consistent with high success rates found in studies of telephone counseling for young adults and confirms that text messaging services specifically designed for young adults are a feasible and cost-effective way to promote smoking cessation. Young adult smokers in South Texas can be reached via mobile media service. This highly scalable service makes mobile, personalized, smoking-cessation advice/support an affordable approach to reach disadvantaged population groups, affect public health, reduce health service costs, and reduce smoking-related health disparities.