Ali Enub, Antony Nitin, Sachdeva Ankur, Deshpande Smita N
Department of Psychiatry, ESIC Medical College, Faridabad, Haryana, India.
Ind Psychiatry J. 2024 Jul-Dec;33(2):366-372. doi: 10.4103/ipj.ipj_280_24. Epub 2024 Dec 17.
The WHO tobacco control team established the Access Initiative for Quitting Tobacco (AIQT) in July 2020. The AIQT team developed a virtual assistant "Florence" to provide digital counseling services to people willing to quit tobacco.
To assess tobacco users' experience of using WHO digital health assistant "Florence" and to track their behavior changes.
The study was conducted at a tertiary care Teaching Hospital in Delhi-NCR, India from November 2021 to March 2022. A total of 102 English-speaking tobacco users were enrolled through snowballing and online requests to use Florence (https://www.who.int/campaigns/Florence), once at baseline, and pursue as often as they wish during the next three months. A predesigned WHO questionnaire (Florence Introductory Questionnaire and Florence User Follow-up Questionnaire) was used to assess participants' experiences of using Florence and track changes in tobacco use behavior at follow-up. Statistical analysis was performed through SPSS-22 using appropriate frequency distribution parameters and nonparametric tests to assess acceptance and efficacy of Florence.
Most participants at baseline, over 3-5 minutes, felt that Florence could not understand their speech (48%), and needed improvement in advice and information on quitting and tobacco use (52%) but felt comfortable interacting with Florence (42.2%). However, participants who re-visited Florence during the next 3 months (12/102) agreed that Florence helped them make a quit plan and used the recommended toll-free quit (9/12). Overall, there was a significant increase in proportion of participants who did not consume tobacco in the last 07 days after using Florence (09 versus 25 of 102, < 0.01) and made quit plans (07 versus 15 of 102, < 0.01) compared to baseline.
Considering the ease, accessibility, and amount of time spent with this virtual assistant, Florence appears a positive step forward in tobacco cessation.
世界卫生组织烟草控制团队于2020年7月设立了戒烟获取倡议（AIQT）。AIQT团队开发了虚拟助手“弗洛伦斯”，为愿意戒烟的人提供数字咨询服务。
评估烟草使用者使用世界卫生组织数字健康助手“弗洛伦斯”的体验，并追踪他们的行为变化。
该研究于2021年11月至2022年3月在印度德里-新德里中央直辖区的一家三级护理教学医院进行。通过滚雪球抽样和在线申请，共有102名说英语的烟草使用者参与使用弗洛伦斯（https://www.who.int/campaigns/Florence），基线时使用一次，并在接下来的三个月内根据自身意愿多次使用。使用预先设计的世界卫生组织问卷（弗洛伦斯介绍性问卷和弗洛伦斯用户随访问卷）评估参与者使用弗洛伦斯的体验，并追踪随访时烟草使用行为的变化。使用SPSS-22进行统计分析，采用适当的频率分布参数和非参数检验来评估弗洛伦斯的接受度和效果。
在基线时，大多数参与者在使用3 - 5分钟后，觉得弗洛伦斯听不懂他们的话（48%），在戒烟和烟草使用的建议及信息方面需要改进（52%），但与弗洛伦斯互动时感觉舒适（42.2%）。然而，在接下来的3个月内再次访问弗洛伦斯的参与者（12/102）一致认为弗洛伦斯帮助他们制定了戒烟计划，并使用了推荐的免费戒烟热线（9/12）。总体而言，与基线相比，使用弗洛伦斯后在过去7天内未吸烟的参与者比例（102人中从9人增至25人，P<0.01）以及制定戒烟计划的参与者比例（102人中从7人增至15人，P<0.01）均有显著增加。
考虑到使用这个虚拟助手的便捷性、可及性以及所花费的时间，弗洛伦斯在戒烟方面似乎是向前迈出的积极一步。
