Health Systems Reach Interventions Project

This project seeks to identify ways to enhance the reach of evidence-based smoking cessation treatments among adult primary care patients who smoke daily and are not ready to start treatment at study enrollment. The 2x2x2x2 factorial experiment will evaluate the extent to which 4 intervention components promote the use of evidence-based treatments to help smokers not initially ready to quit to cease smoking over 2 years. The intervention components tested include: modest financial incentives for completing an initial counseling session in a smoking cessation treatment (vs. none); automated semi-annual outreach materials sent via patients' preferred communication modality using data in the electronic health record to tailor and personalize invitations to use available treatments to quit smoking (vs. untailored letters); direct, proactive telephone outreach from a tobacco care manager who will promote treatment use and deliver motivational intervention twice per year (vs. none); and access to 3 no-cost telephone smoking cessation counseling calls with combination nicotine replacement therapy (C-NRT) or varenicline (vs. state tobacco quitline and primary care provider referral). Proactive treatment offers will be made up to 22 months after enrollment. Smoking status and use of any smoking cessation treatments will be assessed every 6 months through 2 years of study enrollment. Data from 1664 adult primary care patients meeting inclusion/exclusion criteria will be analyzed to see whether the intervention components have an effect on the use of treatment (primary outcome) and smoking status after 2 years of treatment access (secondary outcome). The project will evaluate the manipulated intervention components first in terms of treatment initiation (defined as rates of completing at least 1 smoking cessation counseling session prior to a target stop-smoking date), and then in terms of end-of-study (2 year post-enrollment) abstinence rates (secondary outcome), and cost-effectiveness in promoting reach (tertiary outcome). This experiment will help to identify health system reach interventions that effectively enhance utilization of stop smoking treatments in an effort to help more smokers quit and to prevent tobacco-induced cancer morbidity and mortality.