UW-CTRI has submitted its next major center grant to the National Cancer Institute (part of the National Institutes of Health). The grant is set to be reviewed for scientific merit in June or July.
The current P01 grant, known as the BREATHE study, has concluded recruitment. Funding for BREATHE isn’t set to end until August 2019. However, if this new center grant is funded, BREATHE funding would end when the new center grant begins this December. UW-CTRI Director of Research Administration Dave Fraser played a key role in the grant preparation. He said the reason for the early submission is to help ensure continuity.
The new grant would pick up where BREATHE left off, Fraser said. “We seek to go further in terms of developing treatments that can be offered to clinics and more readily implemented. The emphasis is on translational science. In this grant, we would work more closely than ever with health systems, and those systems would be more involved than before.” The project moves beyond a focus on cessation-treatment effectiveness, with a major emphasis on evaluating the reach of cessation treatments among primary-care patients who may not be ready to quit right away, and on the implementation of interventions for smokers in health-care settings.
Fraser said the idea would continue other UW-CTRI collaborative research examining the feasibility of having a care manager at a health system coordinate tobacco-cessation treatment, and use electronic health records to reach out to all smokers within the system to gauge readiness to quit and assist when patients are ready to quit.
Writers of the grant included UW-CTRI Research Director Tim Baker, UW-CTRI Director Dr. Michael Fiore, UW-CTRI Associate Directors of Research Dr. Megan Piper and Dr. Danielle McCarthy, UW-CTRI Director of Clinical Services Dr. Doug Jorenby, and UW-CTRI Researchers Dr. Jessica Cook, Dr. Tanya Schlam, and Dr. Stevens Smith. Baker and Fiore serve as the principal investigators. Smith and Dr. Dan Bolt lead the statistical team.
Drs. Robin Mermelstein, McCarthy, Piper, and Cook lead specific research projects within the proposed study. Additional scientific collaborators include Dr. Linda Collins, who will lead intervention optimization and evaluation efforts through a core service supporting the research projects, Dr. Marlon Mundt, who will lead cost-effectiveness analyses, Dr. Wei-Yin Loh, who will lead additional statistical analyses, Dr. Barbara Bowers, who will help with interpretation of qualitative-interview data, and Dr. Russ Glasgow, who will lend his considerable expertise related to dissemination and implementation research in health-care systems.
Scientific advisors for this grant include Drs. Steve Bernstein, Carlos Jaén, Jennifer McClure, Nancy Rigotti, Steve Schroeder and Saul Shiffman. UW-CTRI Finance Director Lisa Rogers helped prepare financial information and compile the grant, Madeline Oguss gathered data, Linda Kurowski created graphics, and Dr. Wendy Theobald prepared the research references.
“With nine active studies, three of them new, our research portfolio is strong,” Fiore said. “This new grant would build on that collaborative success. We appreciate everyone who has worked to make that a reality.”