UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention
Some vape companies, such as UT, market their products as “stress relief.” According to research by Truth Initiative, during the pandemic, 81% of young people who started vaping did so to try to lessen feelings of stress, anxiety or depression. More than half of individuals who use e-cigarettes say they vape to cope. “Vaping was something I would …
Above: UW-CTRI Director Dr. Hasmeena Kathuria and colleagues presented their poster at the American Thoracic Society 2026 Annual Meeting. The poster was called, “Opening the black box of engagement in smoking cessation research: How co-design engaged and empowered people who smoke.” They found that when community health workers and patients collaborated to co-design ways to …
UW-CTRI Research Director Dr. Megan Piper joined many collaborators and peers in Washington, D.C. for the 2026 Conference on Intervention Optimization, hosted by Dr. Linda Collins. Collins credited UW-CTRI founders Dr. Tim Baker and Dr. Michael Fiore for implementing her factorial designs and helping to implement the strategy in the real world. Piper was the …
Dr. Brian Williams and Ben Block, a student from the University of St. Thomas-Minnesota, presented their poster on how pediatric exposure to second-hand smoke and vape exhaust and how that affects health outcomes. They presented at the UW Department of Pediatrics Research Day.
UW-CTRI Researcher Jesse Kaye, PhD, has been promoted to Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. He is now on the tenure track. Dr. Kaye’s research aims to develop and disseminate more accessible and effective tobacco cessation treatments. Dr. Kaye recently secured a 5-year $1 million career development award from the National …
While offering patients who smoke cigarettes counseling as well as a prescription to varenicline helps them to quit, it turns out that also adding nicotine patches to those other two treatments doesn’t add much. These findings were published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, with former UW-CTRI researcher and current collaborator Dr. Nayoung Kim …
Vaping companies have tried to make their devices irresistible to customers through the use of nicotine, flavors, touch screens and devices that offer as many as 100,000 puffs. Until now, the only thing that seemed capable of forcing users to stop vaping was the battery running out. Now, companies have created “passthrough” charging, meaning customers …
UW-CTRI has updated the popular Bucket Approach training, a strategy that professionals in behavioral healthcare can use to help patients quit tobacco use. Created in 2017 by now-retired UW-CTRI Distinguished Scientist Dr. Bruce Christiansen, the idea of the Bucket Approach is that individuals with severe mental illness, who smoke at higher rates than the general …
UW-CTRI Health Counselor Kathleen Cantu and Director of Research Dr. Danielle McCarthy staffed a booth and reached out to kids and their families with information about tobacco use and how to avoid it. It was part of the UW Science Expeditions experience at the Health Sciences Learning Center on the UW–Madison campus. McCarthy’s son, Grant, …
Teens and adults who vape can now switch between flavors without having to change a cartridge. The new products, generally called switch vapes, allow customers to toggle between two flavors in the same device. These flavors are sold in self-contained, pre-packaged pods. Other devices use refillable pods. Users can empty one flavor and switch to another; …