Smoking among military personnel represents enormous health and economic costs. Studies show close to $1-billion is spent annually by the Defense Department for health and economic costs directly related to tobacco use. Smoking prevalence is about 30 percent of active-duty personnel. Close to 50 percent of smoking personnel attempt to quit each year, and those who enroll in - and prevail through - the formal cessation classes show high success. But, the challenge has been that very few military smokers use the formal program - and significantly fewer finish - because of the many ways in which treatment misfits their mobile work requirements. Especially during the current period of high deployments, the need for treatments that follow service personnel worldwide is critical. If the military is to have greater impact in reducing prevalence, solutions must reach into the population deeper to enlist more smokers in a formal program, accommodate military lifestyles more effectively, and engage smokers more actively in the process. Two critical forces influence impact - greater efficacy of a solution and its application to a larger share of the population. To improve upon current offerings, we propose to adapt a method from civilian practice that has proven to be highly efficacious across several studies. This application will demonstrate that the method is more effective than Usual Care. Regarding reach, this application addresses barriers to treatment in the existing U.S. Air Force formal cessation program and offers a solution that has carefully considered military lifestyles and limitations worldwide. To build this technology and to test efficacy and usability among Air Force personnel, we have assembled a superior team of leading military and academic nicotine experts who have collaborated extensively and reported widely on their recent large-scale studies examining military smoking. ? ? ?
