The University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI) received a $11.1 million grant from the National Cancer Institute for research and implementation of tobacco-use treatments at 16 Community Health Centers (CHCs) between Wisconsin and Massachusetts, announced UW-CTRI.
According to a 2026 Center for Urban Population Health report, 22.6% of adults in Wisconsin use any kind of tobacco. Tobacco use is the primary cause of preventable disease, disability and death, according to UW-CTRI.
UW-CTRI Research Director Dr. Danielle McCarthy told The Daily Cardinal the project’s goal is to address a disparity in effective tobacco-use treatments for people served at CHCs. The initiative began in 2023 when the team started looking for CHCs to partner with and what needs could feasibly be met, according to McCarthy.
The UW-CTRI 2023 Legislative Outreach Sheet states over 700,000 Wisconsin citizens smoke, costing $3 billion in direct health care costs. McCarthy told the Cardinal the focus of the grant money allocation will be on research and equipping the CHCs with the means to appropriately provide treatment to affected individuals.
McCarthy and UW-CTRI Director Dr. Hasmeena Kathuria will lead the project, alongside partners such as RVO Health and Azara Healthcare.
UW-CTRI received notice Sept. 18 about receiving the award, signalling the green light to move forward with the project.
“Although we’ve made tremendous progress in reducing the overall rates at which the adults in the United States use tobacco, that progress has been really uneven,” McCarthy said. “People with the lowest incomes, the lowest education, the most socioeconomic and social pressures tend to have the highest smoking rates.”
McCarthy said though CHC’s serve large populations that want to quit using tobacco, there still has not been a lot of progress.
There are two different ways the UW-CTRI is approaching the project: Increasing patient awareness and access to the quit line, and helping clinicians and care teams at CHCs integrate tobacco treatment into regular practice during checkups. Within the first year of the initiative, the researchers will analyze what is and isn't working at CHCs within the first year of the initiative, while providing them feedback and the tools on how to best move forward. McCarthy added that a mix of functions will likely be put into practice after results are assessed.
“This project is about generating new knowledge about what works at the system level,” McCarthy said.
The initiative will focus on eight different centers in both Massachusetts and Wisconsin in order to “have a diverse representation of different CHCs,” McCarthy said. One of the selected locations, Access Community Health Center, serves the Madison area.
The goal of CHCs across the United States is to provide affordable pay-what-you-can healthcare for all individuals, McCarthy added.
“The smoking rate among adults who receive care at CHCs is about 22%, which is more than double the smoking rate in the general population,” McCarthy said, explaining how the smoking rate has fallen below 10% over the past year for the first time.
“The reality is that these CHCs are continually having to find ways to do more with less, because their funding has not kept up with inflation,” McCarthy said. According to her, the needs of patients have not gotten simpler and the number of patients has not decreased either.
A key component of the project will be working with RVO Health, an organization that provides a free helpline for tobacco treatment. McCarthy said this partnership is a way for CHCs to fill the gaps with an external resource.
“These CHCs do a fantastic job of asking people about tobacco use,” McCarthy told the Cardinal, "But there's this big gap in the past between doing research [and] finding out what works in those conditions and then putting it to work in real world conditions.”
