Newswise — Part visionary scientist, part creative psychologist, Jonathan Bricker, Ph.D., and his colleagues at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center are building smoking-cessation programs around an innovative approach – called acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT – and delivering them via multiple platforms, from group therapy sessions to a web-based tool to smartphone apps.
Preliminary studies show that Bricker’s programs are 50 to 300 percent more effective than traditional quit-smoking approaches. Evidence suggests the ACT model could help adults cope with many other addictions and harmful behaviors.
In addition to acceptance and commitment therapy, 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 $10 million in total federal research funding to study acceptance and commitment therapy. His current research projects include “WebQuit,” a study of web-delivered acceptance and commitment therapy for adult smoking cessation. WebQuit is a free, Internet-based study that's open to adult smokers nationwide who want to quit.
A licensed clinical psychologist, Bricker is an associate member of the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutch and he also is on the faculty of the University of Washington. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed scientific articles, and since 2008 has served as the assistant editor of ADDICTION – the highest impact scientific journal on the topic of substance abuse. Bricker received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Washington.
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