Can Internet-Based Interventions Work Reach the Underserved?

Richardo Munoz and his colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco have been experimenting with an Internet-based program for stopping smoking. The program is designed to help participants stop smoking. Munoz suggests that this work has the potential to reach poor and underserved populations around the world. In an early report published in Nicotine and Tobacco Research in 2006 the scientists report that the participants are as successful at quitting smoking for a seven day period as people who use nicotine patches. Roughly, about one-fifth of the participants are successful at quitting smoking one year later.

Munoz reports that this program reached 4000 people in 74 countries in the early phases. Since the program was offered in English and Spanish it reached a broad range of people.