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

Using both tobacco and drinking alcohol heavily increases the risk of cancer and also makes it harder to stop smoking. Clinical guidelines recommend addressing alcohol and tobacco use at the same time. The Smoking Treatment for Ontario Patients (STOP) is a free program in Ontario 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, but this was done for only half of eligible patients. Providers cited lack of time and concerns about damaging patient relationships as reasons for not offering this help. One solution is to develop digital tools to deliver the intervention directly to patients. To do this, we have reviewed existing scientific work to identify the best ways to treat alcohol and tobacco use, and will discuss the findings of this review with professional experts to come to a consensus on the best approach. The goal of this project is to continue this work and create digital tools that can help people who smoke tobacco and drink alcohol heavily to both quit smoking and reduce their alcohol use. Aim 1: a) work with patients to develop specific content that is accessible, meets their needs, and respects their wishes; b) use these findings to develop digital tools and add them to a web site people can use to enroll in STOP. Aim 2: a) measure how many STOP patients use these tools and compare that number to the proportion who received the resource previously offered by healthcare providers; b) interview users to see if the intervention is acceptable, easy to use, and appropriate for their needs, and use these results to improve the tools. We will consider this study successful if many more people use the digital tool than received treatment from providers in our earlier study. This will mean that more people get an intervention for alcohol-related problems, which will have a positive impact on public health.