Promoting Smoking Cessation in the Community Via QTW 2014

Although smoking prevalence is decreasing in Hong Kong, there are still 645,000 daily smokers 10.7% ( Thematic Household Survey 2012) and half will be killed by smoking (Lam ,2012) which accounts for over 7,000 deaths per year (Lam, Ho, Hedley, Mak, \& Peto, 2001). Smoking also accounts for a large amount of medical cost, long-term care and productivity loss of US$688 million (0.6% Hong Kong GDP) (McGhee et al., 2006) (Census \& Statistics Department (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government), 2001). Smoking is a highly addictive behavior and it is difficult for smokers with strong nicotine dependence to quit without assistance. On the other hand, reaching and helping the many smokers who have no intention to quit is a challenge, because they are unlikely to seek professional help from smoking cessation services. The Quit and Win programme provides an opportunity to reach and encourage a large group of smokers to make quit attempt and maintain abstinence. The Quit and Win model posits that smokers participating in the contest will have higher motivation to quit with incentives and better social support (Cahill \& Petera, 2011). Studies have found that such quitting contests or incentive programs appeared to reach a large number of smokers and demonstrated a significantly higher quit rate for the quit and win group than for the control group (Cahill \& Rafael, 2008). The Quit to Win Contest in 2014 and the study's interventions using cut down to quit approach are theoretically based on the Health Action Process Approach ( HAPA) for the intervention group (Schwarzer, 2008). The HAPA suggests that one's intention of behavior change can be fostered by knowing that the new behavior has positive outcomes as opposed to the negative outcomes that accompany the current behavior; and planning (action planning and coping planning) which serves as an operative mediator between intentions and behavior. Using gradual cut down approach on smoking cessation will probably