Prof Sharon Lawn recently attended the SRNT-E conference in Munich where she presented research on the adaptation of a smoking cessation App for people with severe mental illness. The research was funded by a Flinders University seeding grant and also involves a Master of Public Health student, Ms Pauline Klein, with Prof Sharon Lawn and Dr George Tsourtos as her thesis supervisors.

Pauline has conducted two successive in-depth interviews with 12 adult smokers: Stage one interviews explored participants’ smoking and quitting experiences, and perception of smoking cessation support options of value to them; Stage two interviews explored participants’ perceptions of utility and acceptability of the Kick.it App features, to inform the adaption of the App. The findings provide striking insights into how support could and should be provided to smokers with severe mental illness, with one of the most striking findings being that the App should have human qualities; to be a caring App. The presentation was extremely well received https://app.box.com/s/0ub04ihwxlxbxm9d97eawnim0r65kbd3

Any enquiries to Prof Sharon Lawn Sharon.lawn@flinders.edu.au

Lawn, S., van Agteren, J., Zabeen, S., Bertossa, S., Barton, C., Stewart, J. (2018) Adapting, pilot testing and evaluating the Kick-it App to support smoking cessation for smokers with severe mental illness: a study protocol. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15, 254-267. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5858323/

Van Agteren, J., Lawn, S., Bonevski, B., Smith, B. (2018) Kick.it: The Development of a Smoking Cessation Smartphone App and Research Platform. Translational Behavioral Medicine. doi: 10.1093/tbm/ibx031