title: Toward an mHealth Intervention for Smoking Cessation.
abstract: The prevalence of tobacco dependence in the United States (US) remains alarming. Invariably, smoke-related health problems are the leading preventable causes of death in the US. Research has shown that a culturally tailored cessation counseling program can help reduce smoking and other tobacco usage. In this paper, we present a mobile health (mHealth) solution that leverages the Short Message Service (SMS) or text messaging feature of mobile devices to motivate behavior change among tobacco users. Our approach implements the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and a phase-based framework. We make contributions to improving previous mHealth intervention approaches by delivering personalized and evidence-based motivational SMS messages to participants. Our proposed solution implements machine learning algorithms that take the participant's demographic profile and previous smoking behavior into account. We discuss our preliminary evaluation of the system against a couple of pseudo-scenarios and our observation of the system's performance.
authors.affiliation: Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
authors.forename: G M Tanimul
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Ahsan
authors.forename: Ivor D
authors.initials: ID
authors.lastname: Addo
authors.forename: S Iqbal
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: Ahamed
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Petereit
authors.forename: Shalini
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kanekar
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Burhansstipanov
authors.forename: Linda U
authors.initials: LU
authors.lastname: Krebs
keywords: Phase-based Framework; Smoking cessation; Theory of Planned Behavior; mHealth