Tobacco use is widely recognized as the most preventable causes of cancer in the United States. Furthermore, tobacco use is responsible for 30% of all cancer-related deaths in the United States. Dr. Stephen Gillaspy (Assistant Professor of Pediatrics) is developing and testing an interactive web-based computer program to facilitate motivation and readiness to cease tobacco use and engage in smoking cessation services.

The web-based program is designed to provide an assessment of current smoking behavior and deliver personalized feedback. Parents will enter information about their smoking habits into the program and will be presented with a series of graphs and normative feedback regarding their smoking behavior and associated parental and child health risks. Dr. Gillaspy's central tenet is that proper and efficient delivery of assessment and personalized feedback will increase smokers' readiness and motivation to engage in smoking cessation services. Jeremy Zaitshik, a senior-level Bioinformatics Specialist from the OUHSC Laboratory for Genomics and Bioinformatics, worked with Dr. Gillaspy on the design and development of the web-based program. The program was developed using LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl). A randomized controlled comparison of the web-based program versus treatment as usual is now being conducted. Parents of children presenting to a general pediatric outpatient clinic, who self-report as current smokers, will complete measures of motivation and readiness to cease smoking. They will then be randomly assigned to complete the computer program or receive treatment as usual. One month later, they will again complete measures of motivation and readiness to engage in smoking cessation. Dr. Gillaspy hypothesizes that exposure to this brief intervention will increase smokers' readiness to cease tobacco use and engage in smoking cessation services. The successful completion of the proposed project will result in the development of a smoking cessation intervention that can be easily and consistently delivered, in a host of different settings, with little burden to existing staff. Dr. Gillaspy is aided on this project by co-investigators Mary Anne McCaffree, M.D. (Professor, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine), Julie Lee, M.D. (Clinical Assistant Professor, Pediatrics) and Thad Leffingwell, Ph.D., (Assistant Professor, Oklahoma State University). These studies are supported by a College of Medicine Alumni Association Research Grant.