UW-CTRI colleagues presented at the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco 2025 Annual Conference in New Orleans. Here’s a rundown of UW-CTRI participation.
Symposia
1. Dr. Adrienne Johnson, co-chair.Pre-Conference Workshop #3: Moving the Needle on Impact: Implementation Strategies and Applications in Tobacco Treatment. Presenters highlighted an implementation science framework, strategy, or study design and an example from their research highlighting how they used the approach to advance tobacco treatment implementation. For example, Penn State Researcher and UW-CTRI Collaborator Dr. Linda Collins illustrated how the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) can be used to arrive at an implementable intervention. She shared findings from a fractional factorial optimization randomized control trial that took place in a primary care setting in Wisconsin.
2. Dr. Jesse Kaye, chair. New Directions in Tobacco Cessation Research. Presenters highlighted research on data precision and innovative therapies. For example, C3I participant Ana Jafarinia from the University of North Carolina presented how the C3I Metrics Workgroup developed a tobacco workflow, treatment data dictionary and guide to operationalize metrics for evaluation of treatments to quit tobacco use within and across various clinical settings. C3I is coordinated at UW and has helped more than 100,000 cancer patients nationwide to address their tobacco use.
Presentations
1. Dr. Jesse Kaye, presentation. Cannabis Use Patterns, Attitudes, And Beliefs Among Primary Care Patients Who Smoke Tobacco Cigarettes. In this large sample of patients who smoke cigarettes, 71.8% have ever used cannabis and 31.8% have used it in the last 30 days. The most common modes of cannabis use were smoking (77.0%; 13.7% smoking simultaneously with tobacco), eating edibles (37.5%), or vaping (24.6%). The most common reasons for cannabis use were recreation/enjoyment (69.5%), pain (63.3%), stress (60.2%), and sleep (57.4%). More than half of participants reported ‘chasing’ a cigarette right before or after cannabis use. The majority reported no motivation to stop using cannabis, though some wanted to cut down.
2. Dr. Megan Piper, discussant. Part of Symposium 18, Transitions Into and Out of Dual Use of Combustible and E-Cigarettes: Implications for Public Health. Piper served as the discussant, offering her perspective on the complexities of dual use of cigarettes and e-cigarettes and how the nuanced trajectories and patterns of such use have clinical and policy implications for public health benefit or harm.
3. Dr. Megan Piper, presentation. Beyond Point-Prevalence Abstinence: Alternative Outcomes for Interventions for People Who Smoke. Part of Symposium 24, Novel Endpoints in Combustible Cigarette Smoking Intervention Trials. Piper presented four different categories of alternative outcomes for clinical intervention trials: process outcomes, mechanistic outcomes, harm reduction outcomes, and outcomes for people who are not ready to quit smoking. “We can improve public health by improving cessation and we can improve cessation by targeting alternative outcomes,” Piper said.
Posters
1. Dr. Jesse Kaye, poster. Offering Motivation-Phase Treatment to Primary Care Patients Who Smoke Increases Treatment Acceptance but Decreases Cessation Treatment Acceptance. Based on data from BREATHE 2 Project 3 led by Dr. Jess Cook, treatment acceptance was higher among patients in Comprehensive Chronic Care (80.5%) than patients in Standard Care (67.2%). However, fewer patients initially accepted smoking cessation treatment in Comprehensive Chronic Care (49.4%) than in Standard Care (67.2%). Offering both Cessation-phase treatment and Motivation-phase treatment led to an initial 13.3 percentage point increase in overall treatment acceptance. However, a smaller proportion of patients entered cessation treatment when a Motivation-phase treatment was also available (49.4%) vs. when only Cessation-phase treatment was offered (58.5%). Thus, offering Motivation-phase treatment in addition to Cessation-phase treatment may at least initially divert some patients from cessation treatment. Long-term follow up will reveal how the offer of Motivation-phase treatment ultimately affects engagement in cessation treatment and abstinence.
2. Dr. Brian Williams, poster. E-Cigarette Quit Attempts by Adolescents and Young Adults. Among adolescents, 51.5% tried to quit vaping in the past year. Among young adults, only 34.0% tried to quit vaping. Adolescents had low rates of quit support use with 9.3% using a behavioral support app, 4.1% using nicotine-replacement medications, and 3.9% reporting prescription medication use. Rates among young adults were similarly low: 7.2%, 8.1%, and 4.3%, respectively. Regarding future cessation plans, 33.3% of adolescents and 43.6% of young adults reported that they plan to quit vaping within the next six months. These findings highlight the need for effective quit strategies given the high percentage of users desiring to quit. The low rates of use of help to quit suggests a need for better ways to reach youth with tools they’ll use.
3. Dr. Hasmeena Kathuria, poster. Can a Nurse Practitioner Intervention Increase Guideline-Concordant Smoking Cessation Medications at Hospital Discharge? Hospitalization serves as a key window to help patients quit smoking, yet most patients rapidly relapse in the first few hours to days after discharge. Most hospitalized patients are not prescribed medications we know work. However, if nurse practitioners offered a tailored intervention with prescribed medications, patients readily accepted it. Long-term adherence to this treatment was modest.
4. Dr. Jesse Kaye, poster. Validating New Smoking Withdrawal Assessments in Unmedicated Individuals who Smoke: The Wisconsin Smoking Withdrawal Scales. This study supports the clinical utility and construct validity of the brief and long versions of the revised Wisconsin Smoking Withdrawal Scale Version 3 (WSWS3) based on rigorous psychometric analysis of its performance during an initially unmedicated quit attempt. Anhedonia appears to be an important component of the tobacco withdrawal syndrome.
5. Dr. Adrienne Johnson, poster.Motivating Change in Aging Smokers: A Pilot Study of Motivational Messages. In the U.S., 9.7 million adults ages 60 and older smoke cigarettes and are at elevated risk for dementia (the greatest age-related fear of older adults). While sharing a message about how smoking can raise the risk for dementia didn’t result in more elderly people quitting smoking, it did as well or better than control messages at improving their intention to try.
