Nicotrol

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.

The INITIATE Study is a randomized controlled trial that is testing an intervention designed to increase long-term abstinence among tobacco smokers seen in emergency departments (ED) and other high-volume hospital and community ambulatory care settings. The intervention includes a behavioural incentive and tailored follow-up support on long-term smoking abstinence, health, healthcare utilization, and cost. Tobacco-related illnesses cost the healthcare system millions each year. Quitting smoking improves smoking-related outcomes, like the onset or management of heart disease, stroke, lung diseases, and several cancers. There are approximately 16 million visits to Canadian EDs each year; an estimated 3-4 million of these involve smokers. Effective quit smoking interventions exist, but are underutilized. Few hospital EDs, community healthcare centers, and other inpatient and outpatient clinics in Canada offer tobacco-use interventions. In order for clinicians to offer quit smoking support, interventions need to be simple given the realities of these high-volume environments. Considering that stopping smoking improves health outcomes, that tobacco-use is an important cause of preventable ED use, and the volume of smokers, Canadian EDs and other high-volume hospital and community ambulatory care settings are a missed opportunity in the initiation of quit smoking support. Our intervention has been designed to optimize uptake and smoking abstinence by including the most effective evidence-based behavioural and drug-related approaches, removing specific barriers and challenges that smokers face when trying to quit (e.g., affordability, low confidence and motivation), while packaging the intervention in a quick-to-initiate manner, making it ideal for fast-paced, complex environments.