Effectiveness of the WeChat-based smoking cessation intervention ('WeChat WeQuit' program) in China: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

摘要

Background and aims Since its first release in 2011, WeChat (Chinese pinyin: Wei Xin) has been widely used to promote health. As the most popular all-in-one social media application providing free instant messaging, voice, text, pictures, videos and location information exchange via smartphone, WeChat holds promise for delivering smoking cessation services to a large number of people at low unit cost in China, a country with more than 300 million smokers. This protocol is for a study that aims to assess the efficacy of a WeChat-based smoking cessation intervention ('WeChat WeQuit') for treatment-seeking smokers in China.