This is a project for the HSMA 6 Hackday on 22nd Oct 2024
A (toy) model for showing the benefit of Making Every Contact Count (MECC) Training
Build a steamlit app for an Agent Based Simulation
The pop culture 80's references will all be in the form of toy robots.
There is an inital group of people and an inital group of government services
People can have lifestyle factors smoking/drinking/no exercise
People make have a probability of making a quit attempt smoking/drinking/no exercise with a probability of success
People have contact with government services at random
Services have can have MECC training, and therefore a probability that any contact will lead to a Very Brief Intervention
Services with MECC training increase over time with a training rate
A Very Brief Intervention increases the probability that a patient will make a quit attempt
Outputs will be MECC training numbers, number of quit attempts and number of successful quits over time
gov.uk MECC evaluation guide 2020
Cochrane Review: Physician advice for smoking cessation
If an unassisted quit rate of 2% at 12 months in a population of primary care attenders is assumed, we can use the confidence intervals for the minimal intervention subgroup, 1.42 to 1.94, to estimate a number needed to treat for an additional beneficial outcome (NNTB) of 50 ‐ 120. If the background rate of quitting was expected to be 3%, then the same effect size estimate would translate to an NNTB of 35‐80. Using the pooled estimate from combining both intensity subgroups in the primary comparison would raise the lower confidence interval and reduce the upper estimate of the NNTBs.
Based on the results of a meta‐analysis incorporating 28 trials and over 20,000 participants, a brief advice intervention is likely to increase the quit rate by 1 to 3 percentage points. The quit rate in the control groups in the included studies was very variable, ranging from 1% to 14% across the trials in the primary comparison. However the relative effect of the intervention was much less variable, because trials with low control group quit rates generally had low rates with intervention, and vice versa.
Three trials show strong statistical evidence that offering support for cessation motivates an additional 40–60% of people to attempt cessation compared to being advised to stop smoking on medical grounds. In all three trials, cessation support was offered without screening for willingness to quit.
ONS - Adult smoking habits in the UK: 2023
Around 6.0 million people aged 18 years and over (11.9%) smoked cigarettes in the UK in 2023; this is the lowest proportion of current smokers since records began in 2011, based on our estimates from the Annual Population Survey (APS).
Cochrane - Brief interventions for heavy alcohol users admitted to general hospital wards
Progress: simple mesa simulation simple streamlit app integration of mesa and streamlit
TODO: add MECC details