UW, collaborators awarded $10M to empower Black people to QUIT SMOKING!

A University of Wisconsin (UW) research team and its partners have garnered $10 million in research funding for a five-year study to determine which treatments work best to empower Black people to quit smoking. 

“Black Americans in Wisconsin and across the United States continueto face significant smoking-related health inequities that are exacerbatedby menthol tobacco use and tobacco industry targeting,” said LorraineLathem, founder and director of Jump and the Sun Consultants (JATSC),a Black-women owned firm dedicated to reducing health disparities. 

The funding comes from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). PCORI is an independent, nonprofit organization authorized by the U.S. Congress with a mission to fund patient-centeredcomparative clinical effectiveness research that provides patients, theircaregivers and clinicians with the evidence-based information they need to make better-informed health and health care decisions. 

The UW research team consists of Principal Investigators Dr. MeganPiper, Co-Director of Research at the UW Center for Tobacco Researchand Package (UW-CTRI), and Dr. Hasmeena Kathuria, Director of UW-CTRI,. 

“In addition, the U.S. Surgeon General and members of Black communities in Milwaukee and elsewhere have identified smoking cessationas a key social justice and health equity issue and ongoing public health concern.” 

Piper agreed. “Our partnerships with state tobacco control programs, the Center for Black Health and Equity, Jump at the Sun Consultants, Wisconsin Network for Research Support, and the North American Quitline Consortium will ensure that what we learn from this research will be used to improve real-world programs to help Black adults quit smoking,” she said. “Research has shown that Black adults want to quit smoking, so let’s make sure they have access to treatments that work for them.” 

This study will examine the effects of three treatment packages for Black adults who want to quit smoking as part of a five-state study (in Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Virginia, and Wisconsin). 

The 1500 participants will be randomized to one of the three treatment packages: Standard, Intensive, or Intensive Incentivized Package: 

The Standard Package will provide 4 counseling sessions and 2 weeks of nicotine patches, similar to a typical state-run quitline. 

The Intensive Package will provide 8 weeks of nicotine patches, 8 culturally specific counseling sessions (participants can choose whether to have in-person group counseling or individual phone counseling), and access to the Pathways to Freedom video (a video designed to help Black adults quit smoking) on the study website. 

The Intensive Incentivized Package will be the same as the Intensive Package and will also provide up to $50 in incentives for participants to attend counseling sessions. 

These three treatment packages were selected because the individual components have been shown to be effective among Black adults trying to quit smoking and because the study’s Community Advisory Board (CAB), with feedback from focus groups of Black adults who smoke, deemed them to be acceptable and feasible. 

The CAB—based in Milwaukee, WI, made up of Black adults with lived experience smoking and/or public health professionals and the Director of Wisconsin’s Commercial Tobacco Prevention and Treatment Program, came together with UW-CTRI to identify treatments that might work best for Black adults who smoke. 

The goal of this research is to determine whether the culturally specific packages being tested in this study will increase quit rates relative to the standard evidence-based package. 

Importantly, these treatments will not be provided in clinical settings but in the participants’ everyday lives and settings. 

The study will also investigate the best ways to engage Black adults in these low-barrier treatments. 

Specifically, the UW-CTRI study team—including Co-Investigators Dr. Adrienne Johnson, Dr. Tom Piasecki, and UW-CTRI Outreach Director Karen Conner—along with Co-Investigators Dr. Stephanie Carpenter (AZ), Dr. Nikki Nollen (KS), Dr. Kola Okuyemi (IN), Dr. Mignonne Guy (VA) and their partners will recruit participants from five metropolitan areas with elevated smoking rates among Black residents (Indianapolis, IN – 17.2%; Kansas City, KS – 18.9%; Milwaukee, WI – 20.2%; Phoenix, AZ – 11.8%; and Richmond, VA – 11.5%). 

“I am particularly excited for this opportunity to address the critical need for effective smoking cessation treatments for Black adults,” said Dr. Kathuria, “who experience some of the highest rates of tobacco-related disparities.” 

“This project was selected for PCORI funding not only for its scientific merit and commitment to engaging patients and other health care stakeholders, but also for its conduct in real-world settings,” said PCORI Executive Director Nakela Cook, M.D., MPH. 

“It has the potential to answer an important question about what treatments work best to empower Black people to quit smoking and fill a crucial evidence gap. 

“We look forward to working with the study team to share its results.” 

This study was selected through PCORI’s highly competitive review process in which patients, caregivers and other stakeholders join scientists to evaluate proposals. 

Pragmatic clinical studies such as this test a treatment’s effectiveness in “real-world” clinical situations such as standard hospitals and outpatient clinics, and can include a wider range of study participants, making their findings more generally applicable. 

This award has been approved pending completion of PCORI’s business and programmatic review and issuance of a formal award contract. 

Funding to build the core community partnerships was provided by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health from the Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP 5129) through a grant to the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. 

ICTR also receives funding from NIH-NCATS Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) UL1TR002373..