Just-in-Time Support for Smoking, Vaping, and Eating Urges During High-Stress Moments Among Gender and Sexual Minority Adults in Dhaka

Starting soon · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Tobacco Use, Electronic Cigarette Use, Emotional Eating, Stress, Psychological

In brief

Gender and sexual minority adults in Bangladesh experience high levels of stigma-related stress. Acute stress can trigger strong, affect-driven urges to smoke, vape, or engage in stress-attributed eating. These urges can rise and fall within minutes to hours, operating outside the reach of conventional clinic-based interventions delivered days or weeks later. This pilot micro-randomized trial (MRT) evaluates whether delivering a brief, culturally adapted support message via smartphone during moments of high self-reported stress reduces the intensity of the urge for the participant's pre-specified target behaviour, relative to no message. Over a 24-day period, 115 participants will be scheduled for up to 5 ecological momentary assessments (EMA) per day. Whenever a participant reports an acute stress level of 5 or higher (0 to 10 scale) and satisfies pre-specified privacy, safety, behavioural, and spacing criteria, the app randomizes with probability 0.5 to deliver either a brief support message or no message. By contributing multiple randomized decision points over time, each participant serves as their own micro-control. The primary outcome is the intensity of the urge for the participant's pre-specified target behaviour, measured 45 to 60 minutes after randomization. An exploratory urge assessment is also collected 10 minutes after randomization; comparing the two time points will help establish whether the support message's effect is immediate, delayed, or both, and will inform the choice of follow-up window for a future, fully powered trial. Prior to trial launch, all EMA items, message content, notification logic, and digital safety protocols will be developed and tested with community members, reviewed by a Community Advisory Board, and locked. As a pilot optimization trial, its objectives are to estimate the short-term causal effect of the prompt, to identify the contexts in which that effect is larger or smaller, and to establish whether momentary assessment and just-in-time intervention research can be delivered safely, privately, and acceptably in this high-stigma setting. The study does not evaluate long-term behavioural maintenance and does not claim to address the underlying structural stigma and discrimination that produce minority stress.

Key facts

Study ID: NCT07746492
Run by: International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh
People needed: 115
Starts: 2026-09-01
Expected to finish: 2027-02-06
Last updated by the study team: 2026-08-05

Who can join

Age: 18 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

Age 18 years or older
Self-identifies as a gender and/or sexual minority person
Resides in Dhaka at enrolment and expects to remain in Dhaka throughout the 24-day assessment period
Reports at least one qualifying behaviour on average at least 3 days per week during the past month: (a) smoking or vaping, or (b) eating primarily in response to stress, anxiety, or emotional distress
Owns a personal Android or iOS smartphone compatible with the study platform that is used solely by the participant and is not shared with others
Able to read, understand, and respond to simple Bangla text
Able to operate the study app independently after a structured onboarding session
Willing to complete five scheduled app-based momentary assessments per day for 24 days and additional brief follow-up assessments after randomized decision points
Provides written informed consent

You may not qualify if…

Currently participating in another behavioural or pharmacological intervention study targeting smoking, vaping, or eating behaviour
Has a severe or unstable psychiatric condition that, based on screening and review by the study clinician, would make participation in the repeated daily assessment protocol unsafe
Is unable to operate the study app independently after structured onboarding

Where it is running

International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) — Dhaka, Bangladesh

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

Trial information comes from ClinicalTrials.gov and is refreshed daily. TrialsForMe does not provide medical care and does not run the studies it lists.