Lorien C. Abroms is applying for a Career Development Award (K07) in Cancer Prevention, Control, Behavioral and Population Sciences to develop the skills necessary to become a successful independent investigator in the area of e-health marketing and tobacco treatment. Dr. Abroms'career development plan includes mentors in the fields of health communication (Dr. Ed Maibach, Dr. Craig Lefebvre), tobacco treatment (Dr. Richard Windsor), qualitative research methods (Dr. Mark Edberg), and biostatistics (Dr. Samuel Simmens), and strong institutional support. Research Plan. Despite the widespread use of email in the general population, few studies have looked at the application of email for smoking cessation. This research proposal aims to explore how tailored, proactive email messages could enhance phone counseling at the NCI Quitline. Tailored email messages, which follow the recommendations of the U.S. Public Health Service Clinical Practice Guideline, may be effective for smoking cessation because they can increase the intensity and contact time of a smoking cessation intervention;they can enhance the problem solving and coping skills of the recipient;and, combined with phone counseling, they can serve as an additional treatment modality for smoking cessation. The research will take place in 3 phases. Phase 1 will consist of a needs assessment of Quitline callers and Quitline staff to inform the design of the email service. Phase 2 will consist of the development of a prototype of an email message service. Phase 3 is a formative evaluation of the prototype within the context of NCI's Quitline. It is hypothesized that phone counseling enhanced with email messages will result in higher levels of client satisfaction, higher levels of NCI Quitline service use, and more favorable smoking cessation outcomes. Participants will be interviewed at baseline, 3, 7 and 12 months. Because this research is built around an existing platform for smoking cessation counseling, the Quitline, the potential for dissemination is high.
