The Great American Smokeout is coming up on Thursday, Nov. 19, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center psychologist Dr. Jonathan Bricker is available to discuss the latest research-based smoking-cessation strategies.
Even though, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 5 million fewer adult cigarette smokers in the U.S. today than there were a decade ago, many still struggle with this lethal addiction, which claims 480,000 American lives annually.
Bricker’s cutting-edge research could revolutionize smoking cessation for the millions of people who struggle to quit.
He and his team at Fred Hutch are building smoking-cessation programs around an innovative approach – called acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT – and delivering them through a variety of modalities, from group therapy to Web-based tools to a commercially available smartphone app called SmartQuit, which is free to residents of Washington state.
Unlike traditional quit-smoking approaches, which focus on willpower and avoiding one’s urges to smoke, ACT focuses on increasing one’s willingness to accept the physical, mental and emotional challenges of quitting while also encouraging commitment to engage in values-based behavior change. For more about ACT, see his TEDxRainier talk, “The Secret to Self Control.”
Preliminary research shows that Bricker’s programs are 50 to 300 percent more effective than traditional approaches to quitting smoking, and evidence suggests that the ACT model could help adults cope with many other addictions and harmful behaviors.
In addition to ACT, Bricker can address all aspects of smoking cessation: motivation to quit, dealing with triggers or urges to smoke, developing a plan of action, relapse prevention, dealing with weight gain concerns, addressing anxiety and depression in the context of quitting smoking, the future of smoking cessation programs and who will need them most in the future.
Bricker, an associate member of the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutch, has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on a variety of National Institutes of Health-funded research projects and has received more than $14 million in federal research funding to study ACT.
He has published 58 peer-reviewed scientific articles and serves as the senior editor of ADDICTION – the highest impact scientific journal on the topic of substance abuse. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Washington, where he is an affiliate faculty member.
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