Newswise — Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center psychologist Dr. Jonathan Bricker is available to comment on a smoking-cessation study published today in JAMA that found similar quit rates among smokers who used the nicotine patch, the drug varenicline and combination nicotine-replacement therapy. All study participants also received six counseling sessions comprising motivational, supportive and skill-training elements.

The study, led by Dr. Timothy Baker of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, found no significant differences in confirmed rates of smoking abstinence at 26 or 52 weeks, which calls into question the relative effectiveness of intense smoking-cessation pharmacotherapies.

“This study has a provocative conclusion: the drug varenicline may be no more effective than the old fashioned, safer and cheaper nicotine patch or patch plus nicotine gum,” said Bricker, an associate member of the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutch.

“But we should be cautious: behavior therapy was offered to everyone in the study, which may have washed out the additive effects of the medications. Indeed, what we may be seeing here is the strong effects of behavior therapy that make it hard to see the unique benefits of each drug,” he said. “The study says more about the value of behavior therapy than it does about each medication.”

To this end, Bricker suggests that future research should look at the effects of each drug without the added layer of behavior therapy.

About Bricker

Bricker’s cutting-edge research at Fred Hutch could revolutionize smoking cessation for the millions of people who struggle to quit.

He and his team 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 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.