ArticleBMC public health2019
Mass media promotion of a smartphone smoking cessation app: modelled health and cost-saving impacts.
Article in BMC public health, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Identifying best modelling practices for tobacco control policy simulations: a systematic review and a novel quality assessment framework.Tobacco control · 2023Pooled it
- Effectiveness of Digital Intervention for Tobacco Cessation Among Adults: A Systematic Review.Addiction & health · 2025Review
- Hunger and housing: Economic disparities in current and daily tobacco use among high school students in the United States in 2021.Preventive medicine reports · 2024Article
- Scoping review of telehealth use by Indigenous populations from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.Journal of telemedicine and telecare · 2024Article
- Predicting the risk of diabetes complications using machine learning and social administrative data in a country with ethnic inequities in health: Aotearoa New Zealand.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2024Article
- Prioritization of intervention domains to prevent cardiovascular disease: a country-level case study using global burden of disease and local data.Population health metrics · 2023Article
- The Definitions of Health Apps and Medical Apps From the Perspective of Public Health and Law: Qualitative Analysis of an Interdisciplinary Literature Overview.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2022Review
- Health promoting and demoting consumption: What accounts for budget share differentials by ethnicity in New Zealand.SSM - population health · 2022Article
- The Cost-effectiveness of a Mass Media Campaign to Promote Smartphone Apps for Weight Loss: Updated Modeling Study.JMIR formative research · 2022Article
- Prescribing Smartphone Apps for Physical Activity Promotion in Primary Care: Modeling Study of Health Gain and Cost Savings.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Article
- Improving on estimates of the potential relative harm to health from using modern ENDS (vaping) compared to tobacco smoking.BMC public health · 2021Review
- Health Gain, Cost Impacts, and Cost-Effectiveness of a Mass Media Campaign to Promote Smartphone Apps for Physical Activity: Modeling Study.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundSmartphones are increasingly available and some high quality apps are available for smoking cessation. However, the cost-effectiveness of promoting such apps has never been studied. We therefore aimed to estimate the health gain, inequality impacts and cost-utility from a five-year promotion campaign of a smoking cessation smartphone app compared to business-as-usual (no app use for quitting).
methodsA well-established Markov macro-simulation model utilising a multi-state life-table was adapted to the intervention (lifetime horizon, 3% discount rate). The setting was the New Zealand (NZ) population (N = 4.4 million). The intervention effect size was from a multi-country randomised trial: relative risk for quitting at 6 months = 2.23 (95%CI: 1.08 to 4.77), albeit subsequently adjusted to consider long-term relapse. Intervention costs were based on NZ mass media promotion data and the NZ cost of attracting a smoker to smoking cessation services (NZ$64 per person).
resultsThe five-year intervention was estimated to generate 6760 QALYs (95%UI: 5420 to 8420) over the remaining lifetime of the population. For Māori (Indigenous population) there was 2.8 times the per capita age-standardised QALY gain relative to non-Māori. The intervention was also estimated to be cost-saving to the health system (saving NZ$115 million [m], 95%UI: 72.5m to 171m; US$81.8m). The cost-saving aspect of the intervention was maintained in scenario and sensitivity analyses where the discount rate was doubled to 6%, the effect size halved, and the intervention run for just 1 year.
conclusionsThis study provides modelling-level evidence that mass-media promotion of a smartphone app for smoking cessation could generate health gain, reduce ethnic inequalities in health and save health system costs. Nevertheless, there are other tobacco control measures which generate considerably larger health gains and cost-savings such as raising tobacco taxes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.