The University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI) has received a five-year $11.1 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to identify strategies to improve tobacco use treatments for adult patients at Community Health Centers. University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI) Co-Director of Research Dr. Danielle McCarthy and UW-CTRI Director Dr. Hasmeena Kathuria will lead the project.

Nearly 22 million adults in the U.S. receive care at Community Health Centers each year and roughly 5 million of these patients report using tobacco. These safety-net clinics serve patients and communities experiencing significant socioeconomic disadvantages. In addition, rates of cigarette smoking among Community Health Center patients are much higher (22%) than in the general U.S. population (10%). The new grant will partner with 16 Community Health Centers in Wisconsin and Massachusetts to develop, test, refine and sustain improved tobacco use treatments for their adult patients to help close critical gaps in tobacco use treatment.

McCarthy highlighted that Community Health Centers are ideally suited to this work. “These Centers already do a fantastic job of screening for tobacco use and advising patients to quit,” she said. “They already monitor their rates of tobacco screening and assistance every year. These strengths set the stage for our proposed patient outreach and continuous quality improvement efforts that can help Centers connect more of their patients who use tobacco with treatments that will help them quit and improve their health.”

The multi-disciplinary investigative team for the project will work closely with Community Health Center patients, personnel and partners to develop new and improved ways to connect patients with treatments to help them quit tobacco. A key partner, Azara Healthcare, a non-profit organization that helps Community Health Centers use their electronic health records to improve the care they deliver, will develop new ways for Centers to reach out to their patients to offer tobacco treatment. They will also develop new and improved ways for Centers to track tobacco treatment outreach and delivery. Another key partner is RVO Health, one of the leading providers of tobacco helpline services in the nation. RVO Health will implement a novel proactive chronic care approach to help people – who do not quit after a single round of treatment – to succeed.

Throughout the 5-year project, the UW-CTRI Outreach Team will draw on its 26 years of experience supporting tobacco treatment improvement in healthcare settings to identify ways to help Community Health Centers effectively and efficiently sustain tobacco use treatment delivery. Dr. Hasmeena Kathuria noted this as a key strength of the project. “Leveraging the strengths of our Outreach Team to help clinics integrate the lessons we learn and resources we develop in this project will help make effective tobacco treatment more accessible to the communities most affected by tobacco use,” she said. “Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of disease and death nationwide, killing nearly half a million Americans a year (including almost 8,000 in Wisconsin and more than 9,000 in Massachusetts),” Kathuria said. “Having cared for patients with tobacco-related lung disease in both Wisconsin and Massachusetts, this opportunity is especially meaningful to me.”

Working together, these partners will develop resources to enhance tobacco use treatment delivered within the Community Health Centers and patient outreach campaigns to promote the use of no-cost, tobacco helpline services. The 16 Community Health Centers will then implement these resources and work with the research team to evaluate how well they increase the use of evidence-based tobacco use treatments and the rates of quitting smoking. The project team will help the Centers then adapt these resources so they can become a standard part of the services the Community Health Centers provide. As such, this new grant will put the findings of the research to work right away to support sustained improvements in tobacco use treatment. The project will also generate implementation guides and resources that other healthcare centers across the nation can use to improve patient access to treatments that help people quit using tobacco.

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To schedule interviews, contact Chris Hollenback, 608-417-9047