Grant: Project Grant - Priority Announcement: Early Detection/Cancer Prevention

Clinical guidelines recommend that people who use tobacco and alcohol together should be treated for both simultaneously. This is partly because using tobacco and alcohol together can increase the risk of cancer and make it harder to stop smoking. In Ontario, Canada, there is a program called the Smoking Treatment for Ontario Patients (STOP) that helps people stop smoking. In 2016, we created an alcohol workbook and asked STOP healthcare providers to discuss it with their patients when relevant. We found that only half of patients reporting risky alcohol use were offered the resource. Some reasons that providers gave for not offering this help included being worried about damaging the relationship with the patient and not having enough time. One solution to these problems is to use digital tools to deliver evidence-based interventions directly to patients. The goal of this project is to create digital tools that can help people who smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol at hazardous levels reduce their alcohol consumption and quit smoking. Aim 1: work with healthcare providers, patients, and other partners to create a digital alcohol intervention that will be offered directly to patients. This tool will be co-designed with patients and researchers and will be incorporated into a web site people can use to enroll in STOP. Aim 2: test how many end users access the digital intervention. We will also ask users if the intervention is acceptable and appropriate for their needs and how easy/difficult it is to use. The results of this evaluation will be used to understand how the tool can be improved. We will consider this study successful if substantially more people access the digital version of the intervention than received it from providers in our earlier study. If this project is successful, it will be a means of ensuring more people get treatment for alcohol-related problems, which would have a positive impact on public health.