The effect of on-line smoking cessation program

Abstract

The potential contribution of the internet smoking cessation seems huge, given that a majority of Koreans now use internet. The Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare developed and has been offering an internet-based smoking cessation program from the January, 2002. Despite the anticipated effectiveness of internet programs, there is little empirical evidence regarding the efficacy of programs. Therefore, this study intended to evaluate the effectiveness of an internet smoking cessation program and to provide the basic database for the development of effective smoking cessation strategies for the health promotion for the whole nation. The data were analysed for quit-smoking rate, smoking relate characteristics and so on. The main results of this study were as follows: 1. For the “dogeon-dambaetalchul” program participants, general characteristics(gender and age) have an effect on quit-smokng. In contrast, for the “geumyeon-malaton” program participants, gender didn’t have an effect on quit-smoking. 2. For the “dogeon-dambaetalchul” program participants, smoking related characteristics(average smoking amount) have an effect on quit-smokng. 3. The cessation rate was 13.8%(for the 30 days) for the “dogeondambaetalcul” program participants and 9.0% for the “geumyeonmalaton” program participants.