A Mechanistic Test of Treatment Strategies to Foster Practice Quitting

Tobacco use disorder is a chronic, relapsing health condition that necessitates a chronic care approach. However, traditional smoking cessation treatment programs allocate nearly all their resources only to those smokers who are willing to set a quit date. This is problematic because few smokers are ready to set a quit date at any given time, and a smoker's stated intention to quit can change rapidly.

One novel potential treatment strategy is to foster practice quitting (PQ), defined as attempting to not smoke for a few hours or days, without pressure or expectation to permanently quit. Practice quitting represents a useful treatment exercise, as it offers a point of focus for behavior change coaching and goal-setting, with or without a planned quit date. The proposed study will test the role of PQ counseling vs. Motivational Interviewing (MI) counseling, and NRT sampling (four-week supply of nicotine lozenges and patches) vs. none. Specific aims are to:

Aim 1: Evaluate hypothesized mechanisms of action for PQ counseling and NRT sampling on incidence of quit attempts by 6 months among current smokers who are not planning to quit in the next 30 days (N=780). We will test the mediational effect of each variable on the relationship between PQ-focused treatment and incidence of quit attempts.

Aim 2: Test both the individual and combined roles of PQ counseling and NRT sampling on incidence of quit attempts by 6 months. We hypothesize that PQ counseling combined with NRT sampling will produce the highest rates of quit attempts through an additive relationship between these two treatment components.