WVU anti-tobacco program earns first NCI grant
Popular Not On Tobacco helps teens quit smoking
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has awarded a two-year, $146,500 grant to Steven Branstetter, Ph.D., of the West Virginia University Department of Psychology in the first NCI-funded project based on Not On Tobacco (N-O-T) data from several states.
The award comes soon after the federal government’s placement of N-O-T on a list of recommended programs dealing with tobacco and drug abuse. Developed at WVU, N-O-T is a school-based program designed for smokers ages 14 to 19.
Branstetter is a core faculty member of the Translational Tobacco Reduction Research Program (T2R2), a joint effort of the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center (MBRCC) and the West Virginia Prevention Research Center.
In a grant scheduled to begin in September, Branstetter will develop a model for understanding and explaining factors that can predict whether a teenager will quit smoking. Such factors include the teen’s beliefs about smoking, his or her smoking history and past quit attempts, and whether friends and family are smokers.
“We have data from teens who participated in the N-O-T program in several states since 1998,” Branstetter explained. “This information will give us insights into how multiple factors combine to make teens more or less successful at quitting smoking. This is important because smoking, and smoking cessation, occurs in a broader context, and it is our hope to begin to understand the role that elements of that broader context play.”
Branstetter also plans to study how other factors – such as a county’s or state’s smoking policies, smoking rates and cigarette taxes – may interact with teen smokers’ quitting success.
“Eventually, such knowledge may help identify populations of teen smokers at highest risk for cessation failure and may help us modify current interventions to increase success,” he said.
“This project fills a very important need in the field of teen-smoking cessation,” said Kimberly Horn, Ed.D.,T2R2 director and a co-investigator in the study.
Branstetter and Horn have received a second grant related to the smoking-cessation program developed at WVU – a one-year, $100,000 award from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This will be the first study to examine the utility of an Internet-based program derived from the evidence-based, face-to-face teen cessation program,” Horn said. “The project will focus on rural youth in the state of Maine as the initial sample.”
A simultaneous pilot project funded by MBRCC will allow further testing of a Web-based intervention program with West Virginia youth.
“These are critical efforts to move our program forward and to address the needs of our state,” Horn said of the two grants.
Developed by Horn and Geri Dino, Ph.D., director of the Prevention Research Center at WVU, the N-O-T program is a school-based program that uses small-group settings to teach teen-agers skills in stress management and stimulus control. The young smokers keep a journal as they learn about social influences and relapse prevention. The self-esteem boosting 10 weekly sessions are led by a facilitator who can be a teacher, counselor, school nurse or other trained staff.
In July N-O-T was added to the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices.
For more information on the Translational Tobacco Reduction Research Program (T2R2) see http://www.hsc.wvu.edu/mbrcc/t2r2/.
For more information on the West Virginia Prevention Research Center see http://prc.hsc.wvu.edu/.