BREATHE: What 3 Things Helped Gary Quit Smoking?

UW-CTRI continues to partner with Aurora Health Care and Dean Clinic throughout southern Wisconsin on Breaking Addiction to Tobacco for Health (BREATHE), the first study to test a chronic-care model for patients who relapse to smoking with a factorial study design. Under the project, UW-CTRI has worked with Epic Systems of Verona to modify the electronic health …

Oncology Partnership Stays Strong

UW-CTRI outreach staff have continued to work alongside Wisconsin Oncology Network cancer centers to educate providers on how to help patients quit tobacco use. This project is made possible by funding from the UW Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center. The partnership began in 2014 with a baseline survey of cancer clinics to assess their needs. Outreach …

Experts Meet at Epic to Discuss R35 Grant Activities to Help Smokers Quit

A group of experts from around the country met at Epic Systems headquarters in Verona, Wisconsin last week to discuss plans to better design electronic health records (EHR) technology to help healthcare professionals help their patients quit smoking. UW-CTRI is partnering with Epic, the world’s largest EHR vendor, to incorporate this new tobacco-treatment system into …

7 Tobacco Research Priorities Presenting to NCI Board

UW-CTRI Director Dr. Michael Fiore and Dr. Robin Mermelstein of the University of Illinois at Chicago last week presented tobacco control research priorities to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Board of Scientific Advisors (BSA) on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. For the last year, Drs. Fiore and Mermelstein have …

UW-CTRI Staff Attend Statewide Conference

UW-CTRI Outreach staff attended the annual state conference of the Wisconsin Tobacco Prevention and Control Program. Here, Christy Vogt of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services speaks to the group. Several UW-CTRI staff members attended the annual Tobacco Prevention and Control Program statewide conference this past month in the Wisconsin Dells. The meeting included a wide array of …

UW-CTRI Partnership Helps Inmates Stay Smoke-Free

UW-CTRI has begun working with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections to help ensure inmates stay smoke-free following their release from prison. DOC’s interest in inmate smoking relapse reflects their core objective of working with inmates so they do not reoffend. DOC staff know that the risk for reoffending increases dramatically when an inmate relapses regarding …

Fiore Attends White House HUD Meeting on Implementation of Proposed Smoke-free Rule

Dr. Michael Fiore attended a meeting on the US Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) proposed rule to make all public housing smoke-free at the White House in Washington, DC. At the meeting, a panel of HUD housing managers and residents discussed potential struggles that could occur once the rule is effective. Fiore said experts in attendance agreed …

JAMA: Study Shows 3 Treatments Have Similar Results

Research shows three medications combined with coaching to quit smoking—a pill called varenicline (Chantix), the nicotine patch alone, and a combination of nicotine-replacement medications—helped about the same percentage of participants to quit smoking. These results, from the Wisconsin Smokers’ Health Study 2 (WSHS 2), are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). …

Smoking and Psychopathology: Mechanisms and Treatments

Dr. Jessica Cook, presentation, Smoking and Psychopathology: Mechanisms and Treatments. For both those with PTSD and those in the control group, smoking a cigarette with or without nicotine reduced the negative emotional response to the stressor. Also, consistent findings across diagnostic groups suggest that smoking motivational processes, at least with regard to emotional modulation, may be …

Could an Enzyme Suggest New Quit-Smoking Treatments?

Researchers have identified an enzyme associated with how addicted a smoker is to nicotine, and it could suggest new paths to designing medications to help smokers quit. UW-CTRI Director of Research Dr. Tim Baker and researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered for the first time that nicotine dependence is associated in part with …