Active Studies

In the first half of 2025, UW-CTRI had nine active studies. These included:

1. Avenues Study. (Dual Use Cessation: A MOST screening trial to identify effective interventions for people who smoke and vape) For people who both smoke and vape, there will be new paths to help them address their relationship with nicotine. The goal of the research is to identify the most effective ways to help people who both smoke and vape to quit smoking. Researchers will recruit 500 people who both smoke and vape. Participants will be randomized to one of two levels of each treatment factor: Medications—participants will get either varenicline or nicotine patch. Counseling approach—participants will either be encouraged to just quit smoking (and keep vaping) or to quit both smoking and vaping. Counseling intensity—participants will get either one coaching session or four sessions. Participants can earn up to $445 by completing the year-long study. Participants will use smartphones to share information with researchers two weeks before and after their quit dates. Participants will record smoking, vaping, medication use, craving levels, self-efficacy and other insights every evening. To date, no published studies have identified effective ways to help people who both smoke and vape to quit smoking. May 2024-May 2029. Total budget over five years of $4.3 million. R01 funded by the National Cancer Institute, NIH. Megan Piper and Dr. Tim Baker, MPIs.
2. Helping Young People Quit Vaping. (Addressing the Vaping Epidemic in Adolescents and Young Adults: Advancing our Understanding of Cessation Treatment and Engagement) More than 1.4 million adolescents and 4.7 million young adults in the United States report vaping, according to FDA and CDC’s National Youth Tobacco Survey. The majority never smoked cigarettes. The goal of this K08 training grant is to improve our understanding of how to engage adolescents and young adults in vaping cessation treatment and ultimately discover how best to help them to quit vaping. Dr. Williams and his colleagues will examine youth and young adult perspectives on quit-vaping interventions such as This is Quitting. Williams plans to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of two enhancements to This is Quitting—financial incentives and FDA-approved medications. In addition, Williams will use data from the PATH Study to better identify predictors of quit attempts as well as success. April 2024-April 2029. Total budget over five years of $967,000. K08 Funded by National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH. Dr. Brian Williams, PI.
3. Vape Check. (The Longitudinal Effects of E-cigarette Use on Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Health Study) This award continues a long-standing successful research collaboration between Drs. Jim Stein and Tim Baker and will examine the long-term effects of vaping on heart and lung health. Participants will receive up to $675 for completing the 3-year study. They’ll also receive individualized test results and updates on their health. Although prior studies have examined some of the physical effects of vaping, virtually all of these have examined very short-term or cross-sectional effects. In contrast, Vape Check follows people who vape over multiple years. Vape Check will help to set the record straight regarding the health effects of vaping. September 2024-September 2029. Total budget over five years of $5.7 million. R01 Funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institutes. Drs. Tim Baker and James Stein, MPIs.
4. Salvation Army Study. UW-CTRI will partner with the Salvation Army of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan on a new $6 million grant to evaluate sustainable strategies Salvation Army staff can use to connect their adult participants who use tobacco with the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line for free tobacco treatment. Wisconsin Salvation Army social service leaders, staff, and participants will play leading roles in planning, monitoring, and adapting Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line connection implementation strategies so they fit well in the usual context of Salvation Army services. Specifically, they will adapt two promising strategies supported by preliminary research. One promising strategy that will be evaluated in this project is an enhanced model of support for Salvation Army implementation teams. This will be compared against the usual UW-CTRI regional outreach support model in different Salvation Army service centers. The second strategy to be tested is focused on giving participants an incentive to talk with a Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line coach before they leave the Salvation Army. Salvation Army staff will develop an incentive strategy that they can sustain long-term, such as extra food pantry access, to promote participant connections with Quit Line treatment. These incentives are designed to give participants who want to quit using tobacco someday a reason to act on that desire today, and to give staff more confidence that they can interest participants in talking with the Quit Line. This application represents our commitment at UW-CTRI to address socioeconomic disparities in tobacco use and access to tobacco treatment through partnerships with community service, healthcare, and other organizations. September 2024-September 2030. Total budget over six years of $6.1 million if fully implemented. UG3/UH3 Funded by the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Danielle McCarthy, PI.
5. Motivating Change in Aging People Who Smoke. This K23 award funds a research study to increase smoking cessation in adults aged 50 and older. While these adults smoke at lower rates (8.2%) than the general population (13%), their cessation rates are also lower, in part because they are less likely to be advised to quit or offered help by providers. A common misperception is that mature adults can’t or won’t quit and, if they do, they won’t benefit from it. But the research reflects the contrary. When they do try to quit, they’re generally more successful than younger people, especially when they use evidenced-based treatments (which double their success). The study will run qualitative interviews to look at what might motivate older adults to quit. One potential incentive is pointing out that quitting smoking can reduce risk for cognitive decline—commonly cited as the greatest fear among mature adults, but one yet to be used for motivation with smoking cessation. UW-CTRI will recruit participants via signs, posters, calls from each person’s clinic, and a letter to motivate and offer treatment. Researchers will compare that to a clinic with no message and a clinic with a standard motivational method. The group plans to run the study at three clinics in the same health system. They’ll be tuned into any behavioral health symptoms and the socioeconomic status of the participants to better analyze and interpret results. Drs. Megan Piper, Carey Gleason, Jane Mahoney, and Jessica Cook are serving as co-mentors to Principal Investigator Dr. Adrienne Johnson. May 2021-Feb 2026, $782,000. Funded by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Adrienne Johnson, PI.
6.  Smoking Treatment for Oncology Patients (STOP Cancer). UW-CTRI reached out directly to UW Carbone Cancer Center patients who smoked to let them know about their tobacco treatment options. Patients were invited to join a research study comparing two active treatments to see which helped more people with cancer to quit smoking. The short-term goals of the STOP Cancer Study were to identify specific smoking treatment needs of patients living with cancer, and then to adapt smoking cessation treatment outreach and counseling to address those needs. People who consented to enter the STOP Cancer Study were randomized to a standard care condition offering three counseling calls and two weeks of nicotine patch, or to an enhanced condition offering seven counseling calls tailored to cancer challenges with 12 weeks of varenicline, a non-nicotine pill to see which active treatment helped more people quit smoking. Patients not interested in the study got standard treatment from the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line or mobile health tools from SmokeFree.gov. The long-term objective of this work was to identify promising strategies to evaluate in larger-scale trials and then disseminate to cancer programs. This was part of the larger UW-CTRI effort to improve cessation treatment effectiveness and delivery for patients living with cancer. They found this proactive, opt-out approach to be feasible, sustainable and scalable. August 2023-July 2025, $510,000. Funded by the UW Carbone Cancer Center Head & Neck Cancer SPORE (Specialized Programs of Research Excellence) via the National Cancer Institute, NIH. Dr. Danielle McCarthy, PI.
7. R35 Outstanding Investigator Award. This seven-year grant will empower UW-CTRI to identify and disseminate effective, innovative ways to help cancer patients quit smoking. Specifically, UW-CTRI researchers, led by grant PI Dr. Michael Fiore and Co-I Danielle McCarthy, will further evaluate innovative approaches to helping cancer patients who smoke to quit. They’ll advance knowledge regarding interventions and health-system changes that will support more patients living with cancer to break free from tobacco dependence. Research studies supported by this grant will identify effective interventions to help people with cancer quit smoking for good, as well as efficient and equitable ways to connect cancer patients with such treatments. UW-CTRI will work with diverse cancer-care programs across the nation to assist with implementing evidence-based smoking treatment for patients living with cancer. They’ll develop guides to disseminate the best strategies to cancer centers nationwide. UW-CTRI Researcher Mark Zehner will manage the project. December 2022-December 2029, $6.5 million. Funded by the National Cancer Institute. Michael Fiore, PI.
8. UW-CTRI Outreach Program–JUUL Settlement. UW-CTRI has a grant to work with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services Tobacco Prevention and Control Program to help individuals ages 18-24 quit vaping. UW-CTRI will develop content for a brief, scalable, single-session intervention to help young adult quit vaping. Decisions about content and how the material would be presented will be co-designed with input from young adults, using focus groups of people who are ages 18-24 and currently or previously vape(d). The primary outcomes will be engagement with the intervention as well as changes in key attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral intention about quitting vaping. Karen Conner coordinates these efforts. January 2024-December 2025, $386,000. Funded by the Wisconsin Tobacco Prevention and Control Program (TPCP). Jesse Kaye, PI.
   
9. Genes, Neighborhoods, and Alcohol Misuse from Adolescence to Mid-adulthood in the Add Health Study. The project will involve secondary analyses of data from the landmark National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a study that has prospectively followed 20,745 adolescents since 1994-95. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the link between the neighborhood in which one lives (e.g. whether one lives in a rural or urban community, in an area that is more or less disadvantaged) and alcohol involvement over the life course. The results of this study might support the development of neighborhood-level preventive and treatment interventions and might also suggest who would be especially aided by such interventions.
   September 2024-September 2028. Total budget over three years of $944,664. R01 Funded by NIAAA, Dr. Wendy Slutske, PI.

For a live look at current UW-CTRI Studies, click here.