Interactive Mobile Doctor (iMD) to Promote Tobacco Cessation Among Cancer Patients

Overview

The proposed pilot study aims to develop and test a patient video educational tool, an interactive Mobile Doctor (iMD), that can be integrated in radiation oncology setting to effectively engage cancer patients receiving treatment at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to facilitate smoking cessation and maintaining smoking abstinence in the context of their radiation treatment. This study is the first to address tobacco use among can patients receiving radiation therapy that targets both tobacco cessation (current users) and maintaining abstinence (former users who have recently quit).

The interactive Mobile Doctor (iMD) is an interactive video educational program that delivers tailored messages in response to participants' input, generates a summary report providing tobacco use status and cessation resources and solicits participants' interest in receiving referral or information to tobacco cessation resources. PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: I. To assess the feasibility and acceptability of the interactive Mobile Doctor (iMD), an interactive patient education tool, utilizing patient-centered and interactive technology approaches to target cancer patients who report using tobacco within the past 12 months and who are receiving or planning to receive radiation therapy for cancer. SECONDARY OBJECTIVES: I. To assess preliminary efficacy of iMD on tobacco abstinence when compared to the control (assessment + resource information only). II. To estimate impacts of iMD on referral requests. Participants will be randomized to either the iMD or Control Group in a 1:1 ratio, stratified by tobacco use status within past 30 days (current vs former tobacco users), to the iMD intervention or the control group iMD Intervention Participants: Participants receive up to a total of 3 iMD sessions prior to their completion of radiation therapy (RT). The iMD session will take about 10-15 minutes and will include: 1) computerized assessments(tobacco use in past 12 months and in past 30 days; types of tobacco used, time to first cigarette or tobacco use, cigarettes used per day on a typical day of use, readiness for quitting, and concerns about quitting smoking) that will be delivered on the screen via text with accompanying audio and participants will respond directly on the tablet 2) tailored videos that deliver messages specific to patient's responses to selected assessment questions, including addressing misconceptions of being too late to quit smoking after cancer diagnosis, which could be a barrier for quitting smoking, or tobacco-free is not necessary after completion of RT; and 3) a summary printout, the iMD Summary Reported generated at the end of each iMD session will provide a summary of a participant's RT completion status or anticipated completion date, tobacco use status, plans for quitting or commitment to abstinence, key messages addressing participants' concerns and uniform resource locator (URL)s of the videos watched, California Smokers' Helpline website and telephone numbers, and interest to be contacted by a tobacco treatment specialist or in receiving for tobacco use, referred to tobacco treatment resources. Control Group Participants: Participants will undergo the assessment questions. Instead of viewing and participating in the interactive video education about tobacco cessation or tobacco-free living, will participants receive a handout containing tobacco cessation resources. Participants will be followed up for 3 month after their first visit.