AI-Enhanced App-based Intervention for Adolescent E-cigarette Cessation

February 18, 2026 updated by: Eunhee Park, State University of New York at Buffalo

The goal of this quasi-experimental study is to test if a smartphone app can help adolescents aged 14-20 quit e-cigarettes. The main questions it aims to answer are:

  • Can the app help adolescents manage cravings and increase their readiness to quit?
  • Does the personalized and real-time support provided by the app improve their success in quitting e-cigarettes?

Researchers will compare two groups: an immediate-intervention group that starts using the app right away and a delayed-intervention group that begins after three months, to see if the timing of app access influences outcomes in e-cigarette cessation.

Participants will:

  • Set personal goals and track their daily progress within the app.
  • Use a real-time "urge" feature that provides immediate support during cravings.
  • Engage with a chatbot for quick answers and motivational support around quitting.

This study aims to create an accessible, personalized tool to help adolescents reduce or quit e-cigarette use, exploring its feasibility as a broader intervention model.

Study Overview

Status

Not yet recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

This quasi-experimental study aims to develop and evaluate an AI-enhanced smartphone app designed to support adolescents aged 14-20 in quitting e-cigarettes. Given the high prevalence of e-cigarette use among youth, this app-based intervention focuses on providing personalized, real-time support for cravings and motivation to quit. The app integrates interactive features to engage users and is designed for scalability, enabling wide-reaching impact in various settings such as schools, clinics, and communities.

Study Phases and Objectives

Phase 1: Development and Usability Testing Phase 1 focuses on refining an existing beta version of the app. In this formative stage, the app's design, content, and features will be adjusted based on adolescent feedback to ensure it is user-friendly and engaging. Participants will test the app and provide insights through usability surveys and interviews, which will inform necessary changes.

Key activities in this phase include:

  • Gathering feedback on usability and design.
  • Modifying app features to better meet the preferences and needs of adolescent users.
  • Finalizing the app to meet high usability benchmarks for deployment in the next phase.

Phase 2: Clinical Feasibility Testing In Phase 2, the app's effectiveness will be tested using a quasi-randomized design with two groups: one group of participants will begin using the app immediately, while the second group will start after a three-month delay. This approach will help determine if earlier access to the intervention leads to improved outcomes in terms of e-cigarette cessation.

The study will assess how the app impacts participants' readiness to quit, actual quitting attempts, and ongoing motivation over time. Engagement levels with the app's features, such as real-time craving support and AI-driven educational modules, will also be tracked to evaluate the intervention's overall feasibility and appeal.

App Features and Personalization

The app's core features include:

  1. Goal Setting and Progress Tracking: Users set personal quitting goals, track their progress, and access daily training modules to build skills for managing cravings and quitting.
  2. Real-Time Craving Management: The "urge" feature provides immediate support during cravings, using mindfulness exercises and coping strategies tailored to each user's needs.
  3. AI Chatbot Support: A chatbot offers 24/7 assistance, answering questions and providing motivation based on users' quitting status and individual characteristics.

These AI-driven tools are customized according to user data and interactions within the app, ensuring the intervention feels personal and responsive to each user's progress.

Data Collection and Analysis Data will be collected on app usage, engagement with specific features, and changes in e-cigarette use over time. Analysis will include both user feedback and statistical evaluation of the app's impact on participants' quitting success. Insights from this data will contribute to the ongoing refinement of the app and inform its potential for broader use as an adolescent-focused e-cigarette cessation tool.

Anticipated Impact This study aims to create a user-friendly, scalable app that leverages AI to support adolescents in quitting e-cigarettes effectively. If successful, this digital intervention could be a valuable resource for youth cessation programs and serve as a model for similar health-related app-based interventions.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

100

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Locations

  • United States
    • New York
      • Buffalo, New York, United States, 14214
        • University at Buffalo, School of Nursing
        • Contact:
        • Principal Investigator:
          • Eunhee Park, PhD, RN, APHN-BC

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Child
  • Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria

  • Adolescents who are 14 to 20 years old
  • Currently use nicotine-containing e-cigarettes (those responding "Yes" to: Have you used an electronic vaping product such as PuffBar, ElfBar, Lost Mary, JUUL, Vuse, e-cigarettes, vapes, vape pens, e-cigars, e-hookahs, hookah pens, or mods at least 1 day in the last 30 days? [CDC, 2020])
  • Interested in participating in an e-cigarette use cessation program
  • Owners of an iPhone or Android smartphone who use their phone daily
  • Able to read English

Exclusion Criteria

  • Individuals who fall outside the age range of 14 to 20 years
  • Those who have not used a nicotine-containing e-cigarette in the past 30 days
  • Individuals not interested in participating in an e-cigarette cessation program
  • Adolescents who do not own or regularly use an iPhone or Android smartphone
  • Non-English speakers

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Prevention
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Immediate-Intervention Group
Participants in this arm will begin using the AI-enhanced smartphone app immediately after enrollment. This arm serves to assess the initial impact and feasibility of the app as a tool for e-cigarette cessation among adolescents.
Behavioral: AI-enhanced smartphone app

A smartphone app has been developed and is in keeping with guideline recommendations for the treatment of e-cigarette products. This app has a user-friendly Graphic User Interface (GUI) to allow users to build their own accounts and individualized contents conveniently, based on the input the users initially provide including e-cigarette use patterns, readiness to quit e-cigarette, beliefs about e-cigarette, nicotine addiction, self-efficacy, other substance use status, and parental or peer e-cigarette use status.

The proposed AI model in this app will learn information from the input data, including progress toward e-cigarette cessation (e,g, changes of readiness of quitting, quit attempts), and additional data including emotional status, stress level, feedback to the previous learning modules, and then predict the result on the fly. Based on the predicted result, the app will send in-time motivational messages and mindfulness training modules.
Active Comparator: Delayed-Intervention Group
Participants in this arm will wait three months after enrollment before using the AI-enhanced smartphone app. This arm serves as a delayed control, allowing comparison with the immediate-intervention group to understand the impact of timing on quitting success.
Behavioral: AI-enhanced smartphone app, but with delayed access
Participants in the control group will be placed on a three-month waitlist. After this period, they will receive access to the same app-based intervention as the immediate intervention group, allowing a comparison between immediate and delayed access.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Usability
Time Frame: 30-Day Follow-up
The usability of the intervention will be assessed using the mHealth App Usability Questionnaire, a 21-item instrument designed for interactive mobile health apps. It measures three domains: ease of use and satisfaction, system information arrangement, and usefulness. Each item is rated on a 5-point Likert scale, yielding a total score range of 21 to 105, with higher scores indicating better usability. An open-ended question will also be included at the end of the survey to gather suggestions for app improvement.
30-Day Follow-up

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Engagement - Frequency of App Use
Time Frame: 30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up
Automatically recorded log data from the app will track each login event by a participant.
30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up
Engagement - Minutes of App Use
Time Frame: 30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up
Cumulative minutes of app usage will be captured via app log data.
30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up
E-cigarette Use
Time Frame: 30-day and 3-month follow up
Self-reported number of days participants used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days. Responses range from 0 to 30 days.
30-day and 3-month follow up
Quit attempts
Time Frame: 30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up
Self-reported number of quit attempts in the past 30 days, along with the longest duration of abstinence.
30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up
Readiness to Quit
Time Frame: 30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up
Readiness to quit will be assessed using a modified Contemplation Ladder. The Contemplation Ladder ranges from 0 (no thought of quitting) to 10 (taking action to quit). Higher scores indicate greater readiness.
30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up
Nicotine Dependence
Time Frame: 30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up
Measured using the Penn State Electronic Cigarette Dependence Index (PSECDI), a 10-item scale with a total score range of 0 to 20. Higher scores indicate higher levels of nicotine dependence.
30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up
Beliefs About E-Cigarettes
Time Frame: 30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up
Assessed using a questions from the National Youth Tobacco Survey about e-cigarette harm, addictiveness, and benefits.
30-Day and 3-Month Follow-up

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

State University of New York at Buffalo

Collaborators

National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Advanced Bionics

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Estimated)

April 1, 2026

Primary Completion (Estimated)

December 1, 2027

Study Completion (Estimated)

June 1, 2028

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

March 6, 2025

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 1, 2025

First Posted (Actual)

May 11, 2025

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

February 19, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 18, 2026

Last Verified

February 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 1R34CA287720-01A1 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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