Tobacco use has alarmingly high rates among people with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) (PWH), 43% compared with 15% in the general population. Due to the development of highly effective treatments for HIV and the resulting increased longevity among PWH, this population now loses more life years to smoking than to HIV infection itself. Novel and effective models to deliver wider reaching smoking cessation interventions for PWH are highly needed and indicated as a priority for National Institute of Health. Digital therapeutics (DTx) may be a novel, scalable, and highly available approach for engaging and treating smoking in this population. However, although DTx for smoking cessation have been shown effective in the general population, no large trial to date has examined the effectiveness of a tailored DTx for smoking cessation in PWH, and no implementation science work has examined barriers and facilitators of implementation of DTx for smoking cessation in this population.
