Network-supported smoking cessation study is rolled out nationally

Text message support for smokers wanting to quit is now available as part of the NHS SMOKEFREE campaign.

Assisted by the Primary Care Research Network (PCRN), the Txt2stop study showed that sending motivational text messages to smokers could double quit rates – a revolutionary new approach to kicking the habit. The ‘mobile phone support programme’ tested by the study is now one of the ‘ways to quit’ offered on http://smokefree.nhs.uk.

The study found that the quitting success rate of txt2stop study participants was over double that of a group of patients receiving the standard NHS smoking cessation package – 10.7 per cent compared to 4.9 per cent. As a result, the study hit the headlines earlier this year when the findings were published by The Lancet medical journal.