# Project 2: Centralized Health System Interventions to Enhance Reach: A Factorial Screening Experiment (HS Reach Interventions)

> **NIH NIH P01** · UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON · 2022 · $183,772

## Abstract

Project Summary
A small minority of the 25 million US smokers who receive primary care each year receive evidence-based
smoking treatment. Healthcare systems have enormous potential to connect smokers with high quality,
evidence-based care. Diverse strategies have been used to increase treatment use, but treatment reach
remains stubbornly low. The proposed research study will be the first rigorous factorial experiment to optimize
a package of centralized healthcare system interventions to enhance smoking cessation treatment reach, and
through this mediating pathway, reduce smoking prevalence after 2 years of reach intervention exposure and
treatment access. Intervention components with promising empirical support and grounding in behavioral
theory will be fully crossed in a 2x2x2x2 factorial experiment in 1664 patients who smoke daily from 8 primary
care clinics. These patient-focused intervention components include: 1) monetary incentives for treatment
initiation, 2) electronic-health-record (EHR)-enabled automation of quarterly tailored treatment invitations
offering low-barrier treatment access, and 3) proactive telephone care management and motivational
intervention. These components will be used to promote use of either standard care (referral to a toll-free
tobacco quitline and the primary care provider), or to more intensive treatment (3 phone counseling sessions
with either combination nicotine replacement therapy or varenicline), as randomly assigned on a 4th
experimental factor (access to intensive treatment). All 4 experimental intervention components will be on or off
(as randomly assigned) for 2 years to permit analysis of their cumulative impact on treatment reach and
abstinence among primary care patients who are not initially willing to make a quit attempt. Analyses after 1
year of follow up will identify an especially effective (optimized) reach-intervention package to be evaluated in
the Optimized Care Project in this Program Project. Clinic-based recruitment will support the project aims to
identify: 1) a highly effective intervention package that promotes usual and intensive treatment use (reach) and
downstream abstinence from smoking at low cost, 2) the mediating pathways for these effects, and 3)
subpopulations of patients who particularly benefit from these intervention components (reach
representativeness). This pragmatic project will use diverse real-world clinics, clinic staff interventionists, and
patient participants, with minimal assessment to enhance generalizability and dissemination potential (as per
RE-AIM). At the same time, rigorous experimental design and statistical analyses will enhance internal validity.
This project will uniquely optimize interventions to enhance smoking cessation treatment reach. The project will
be integrated into the Program Project to yield additional information (e.g., whether some components are
more difficult to implement than others; how an optimized reach intervention works with op...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10415917
- **Project number:** 5P01CA180945-09
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
- **Principal Investigator:** Danielle Erin McCarthy
- **Activity code:** P01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $183,772
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2014-09-01 → 2024-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10415917

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10415917, Project 2: Centralized Health System Interventions to Enhance Reach: A Factorial Screening Experiment (HS Reach Interventions) (5P01CA180945-09). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10415917. Licensed CC0.

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