Mondays: Helping smokers quit and stay quit

The majority of tobacco quitters attempt to quit an average of 8-11 times before they are successful. Insight into behavioral patterns may be valuable for determining how to optimally time interventions to help quitters sustain tobacco cessation. Smoking cessation programs can help their participants prevent relapsing by periodically disseminating messages to keep them engaged with the program and focused on their quit. Practitioners could increase receptivity by answering the following questions: 1) How often should we send communications to program participants? and 2) When is the ideal window of time to deliver these messages? New evidence shows consistent weekly cycles in calls to tobacco quit lines, with the largest volume of calls occurring on Mondays. Studying these cycles may help us improve how tobacco cessation programs communicate with group members, allocate quit line resources, and promote their services. Using this evidence, the Monday Campaigns created “Quit & Stay Quit Monday” a smoking cessation campaign that encourages quitters to use Monday as the day to recommit to their tobacco cessation. This gives them 52 chances a year to quit, celebrate progress, or quit again. The Monday Campaigns piloted “Quit & Stay Quit Monday” with several smoking cessation groups across the country and measured how leveraging Mondays helped programs engage participants and helped participants sustain their tobacco cessation. This presentation will provide insight into the Quit & Stay Quit Monday strategy and walk them through the evidence for harnessing weekly patterns to effectively communicate with people trying to quit smoking.