Each daythousands of teens around the world world get hooked on tobacco. To help them to stop smoking, scientist from the Department of Behavioral Science at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, have developed an interactive program. The smoking cessation and prevention program app helps to prevents teens from smoking and encourage them to quit if they have started thehabit. The app is available free on the Apple iTunes Store.
?Our app combines education and entertainment with comics and interactive games,? explainedAlexander Prokhorov, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of behavioral science at MD Anderson Cancer Center,the program’s designer. ?It motivates teens to stay away from tobacco and teaches behavioral skills to help them resist pro-tobacco pressures. Such an approach is much more appealing to youth than text-based instructional tools,” he noted.
[This] approach is much more appealing to youth than text-based instructional tools.
Prokhorov, who?s also director of MD Anderson?s Tobacco Outreach Education Programor TOEP, led the development of the Tobacco-Free Teens app from content largely drawn from MD Anderson?s ASPIRE (A Smoking Prevention Interactive Experience) program, a bilingual, online tobacco prevention and cessation curriculum targeting middle and high school students around the world.
Tobacco control education and training
The TOEP program aims to deliver the highest quality education and training in tobacco control principles and practices to health care professionals and the public. To do this, the scientists behind the program develop new, exemplary methods of tobacco control education and training using state-of-the-art science and technology including multilevel educational components. Thenew app is one of the examples of this unique strategy.
‘Tapping away temptations’
Equipped with colorful animated teen characters and cool tunes, the app ? available for iOS platform ? addresses teens who have never smoked, teens who have started but want to quit, those having trouble quitting and those not interested in quitting (yet). The app includes gaming activities that reinforce smoking-cessation tips tailored for the teenage audiences. In one game the user?s task is to tap away various temptations to smoke ?depicted as objects ? that rapidly moves around the smartphone screen.
Particular about appearance
Another game challenges teens to match two pairs of cards that contain memorable images of smoking consequences including yellow teeth, bad breath and stained fingers. ?Every module of the app was carefully designed with teens in mind,? Prokhorov noted. ?Most teens are very particular about their appearance and don?t realize that smoking can affect their appearance well before they develop cancer.?
Prokhorov has been on the edge of prevention and smoking-cessation technology innovations for teens for many years now. He?s co-director of MD Anderson?s e-Health Technology Program, which is funded by the Duncan Family Institute for Cancer Prevention and Risk Assessment. He?s confident the app will serve as a handy tool to prevent teens from smoking, educate and encourage teen smokers to quit, and prevent relapse among recent quitters.
?The Tobacco-Free Teens app is a perfect tool complimenting the many smoking-cessation efforts that are underway at MD Anderson,? said Prokhorov. ?We?re proud to be among the pioneers of tobacco prevention and cessation apps.? Tobacco-Free Teens was funded by the Tobacco Outreach Education Program.
Helping physicians
Experts from MD Anderson Cancer Center have also created a tobacco prevention/cessation course to help physicians and other health care professionals counsel their patients on the benefits of smoking prevention and cessation.This material can be downloaded from the MD Anderson website.
The app has been downloaded more than 1,000 times since its launch June 27, 2013 on the Apple iTunes App store.
For more information:
DownloadTobacco Free Teens app
Photo: Alexander Prokhorov, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of behavioral science at MD Anderson Cancer Center.Courtesy: Copyright MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas.
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