Bonnie Spring
Northwestern University, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Smoking, lack of exercise and obesity hurt people who have had cancer: they are linked to poorer treatment response, more side effects, higher chance of the cancer returning, shorter life, lower quality of life and higher costs. These habits are as common in cancer survivors as in healthy adults, yet cancer clinics rarely have a routine way to refer patients for help changing them.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
- Topics
cancer survivorship
pragmatic clinical trial
randomized controlled trial
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Add brief screening for smoking, physical inactivity and obesity to the electronic health record across an oncology care network, and expand automatic referral to a cancer-focused health promotion service.
- Compare a 6-month facilitated telehealth program of 12 coaching sessions with a self-guided program of guideline-based written materials in a randomized trial of 1,500 cancer survivors.
- Measure the effects of each program on risk behaviors, care access and quality, health care use, cost, patient-provider communication and health outcomes using REDCap surveys at baseline, 3, 6 and 9 months.
More about the research
This pragmatic clinical trial, a trial run within everyday care rather than an idealized research setting, builds behavior-change support into cancer care across the Northwestern Medicine oncology network. Brief screening for risk behaviors is added to the electronic health record (EHR), and an existing automatic referral system for quitting smoking is expanded to send patients to a cancer-focused health promotion service that also treats inactivity and obesity. About 1,500 adult survivors who finished curative cancer treatment and have at least one risk behavior will be randomly assigned, balanced by sex and number of risk behaviors. One group gets 12 telehealth coaching sessions over 6 months by video, audio or phone. The other group gets written National Comprehensive Cancer Network guideline materials and a list of local resources. Surveys at baseline and at 3, 6 and 9 months, collected through REDCap, will measure reach, changes in behavior, access to and quality of care, health care use, cost, patient-provider communication and health outcomes.
Why it matters
Cancer survivors who smoke, are inactive or have obesity face higher recurrence risk and worse quality of life. If telehealth coaching that is triggered automatically from the health record proves effective and affordable, cancer centers could offer health behavior treatment to many survivors with little disruption to clinic workflow, adding evidence for telehealth in cancer care.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kathryn Taylor
Georgetown University, DC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Compare electronic quitline referral against a centralized health-system phone counseling plus nicotine replacement program for lung screening patients, measuring biologically verified quitting at 3 and 6 months.
Carmina Valle
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether a 6-month mHealth weight-loss program tailored to adolescent and young adult cancer survivors produces greater weight loss at 6 months than a self-guided program, in a nationwide randomized trial of 240 survivors.
Jennifer Steel
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Evaluate whether CARES, an electronic health record-based screening and stepped collaborative care intervention, improves patient-centered outcomes such as health-related quality of life, in a cluster randomized trial of more than 34 outpatient oncology clinics.
The school
Northwestern University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 536 research doctorates a year.
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