I was part of the Time to Quit (T2Q) study, led by Dr. Maria Duaso at King’s College London and Dr. Devon Noonan at Duke University.
The aims of this work were to understand special challenges of quitting smoking for people with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus, and understand whether a text message intervention would be useful to support people with smoking cessation.
We interviewed people in the USA and the UK, and found that all the people who spoke with us wanted to quit smoking. They identified significant barriers to quitting, such as diabetes distress and potential weight gain from quitting smoking that would make their diabetes management worse. Many participants from the USA also had difficulty accessing health services because of cost.
A text message intervention with supportive messages would be welcomed by people with diabetes trying to quit smoking. We also recommend that healthcare professionals consider both diabetes management and smoking cessation together when working with these clients.
