RENDEZ-VOUS 85
Wednesday, January 3 , 2001
Thank you Jean-François for accepting our rendez-vous. May I ask you to introduce yourself?
I have been working at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Switzerland since 1992.
I specialized in smoking prevention-cessation in 1996, this is a personal choice.
I have a PhD in political science (my dissertation was on program evaluation), and a master degree in public health. You can see my picture and my list of publications at http://www.stop-tabac.ch/fr/cv_etter.html. I developed the web site www.stop-tabac.ch and conducted a randomized trial showing that the program available on this site double the odds of quitting smoking.
Q1. Recently there were about 160 on line smoking cessation services available. What makes your site different?
On www.stop-tabac.ch, we have on on-line "expert-system" that gives individualized counseling to smokers. After answering a questionnaire, smokers receive a counseling letter that takes into account their level of motivation to quit, level of addiction, attitudes towards smoking, self-efficacy, etc. The system is based on the Transtheoretical Model of Change and on the Theory of Planned Behavior. I think this is the only such system available at no charge on the web. Other teams have developed similar systems, but they don't put it available at no charge on the web.
Q2. How many people have visited your site? Where do they come from? How can you assess if it is effective in helping people quit?
This site received 170.000 visitors in the previous 2 years, mainly from France, Switzerland, Canada and Belgium. In the different versions of the program, we produced over 30,000 personalized counseling letters, for over 20,000 smokers. We have the proof that our "expert-system" doubles your chances to quit smoking (randomized trial in 3000 smokers, Nicotine Tob Research 2000;2:199).
Q3. It seems to me your expert system self testing approach should be of interest for health maintenance organizations. Did they show any interest?
No.
Q4. Switzerland has four official languages. How many languages do you now offer? Are other versions in the making and what type of organizations eventually partner with you to develop them?
The site is available in French, English, and Danish and it will be soon available in Italian and in Georgian. A similar program in German is available at www.at-suisse.ch. We collaborate with the Danish Cancer Society and the Swiss Association of Non-smokers (Italian version). Other important partners are the Swiss Cancer League and the Health Authority in Geneva.
Q5. The process of quitting with various stages is probably very similar all over the world but the local environment varies considerably. For instance in various US states quitlines services are offered, media campaigns incite people to quit, in other places free or subsidized drugs are offered. How can you tailor the information according to each place?
Versions of the site in foreign languages are done in collaboration with organizations in these countries. These organizations take care to develop versions of the site that are culturally adapted. They conduct tests among smokers to make sure that the program is acceptable.
Q6. Is there anything else you would like to add ?
We developed an other interactive program for users of Nicotinell patches and gums, on http://www.nicotinell.ch/french/questionnaire/.
In a different area, we are conducting a randomized trial to test the effectiveness of NRT on smoking reduction in smokers who do not want to quit. Preliminary results show that it works.
Thank you Jean-Francois for taking the time to be with us today.
Rendez-vous is supported by a contract from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
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