A Mechanistic Test of Treatment Strategies to Foster Practice Quitting
Status:
Not yet recruiting
Trial end date:
2027-08-30
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
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. Although a growing body of evidence supports the role of practice quitting
in fostering permanent quit attempts and cessation, there is a significant knowledge gap
regarding which treatment strategies should be used to engage smokers in practice quitting.
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.