Clinical trial · Interventional
Personalized Alerts and Care Pathways to Prompt Prevention Interventions for Alcohol and Tobacco Users in Primary Care
Personalized Patient Alerts and Care Pathways to Prompt Prevention Interventions for Combined Alcohol and Tobacco Users in Primary Care
- Source
- ClinicalTrials.gov
- Retrieved
- Sep 8, 2026
- Layer
- normalized (units and labels harmonized; values unchanged)
- Run
- ING-CLINICALTRIALS-20260908-000001
Summary
Brief summary (as posted)
Tobacco and alcohol use present multiplicative risk for aerodigestive cancers. Reducing alcohol consumption improves smoking cessation outcomes and reduces cancer risk. Risky alcohol consumption and smoking are often treated separately despite concurrent treatment potentially leading to better outcomes for each. However, no rapidly scalable program exists for combined interventions in primary care clinics spread across wide geographic areas. This cluster randomized trial aims to report on the effects of a novel clinical decision support system (CDSS) on intervention rates by primary care practitioners addressing risky alcohol use in a smoking cessation program. The investigators will be implementing a clinical decision support system (CDSS) in 221 primary care sites participating in the Smoking Treatment for Ontario Patients (STOP) program across Ontario, Canada. Sites will be blindly allocated to one of two clinical decision support systems guiding practitioners to provide a risky alcohol use intervention to smokers attempting to quit using nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). Risky alcohol use is defined as drinking above the Canadian Cancer Society's low-risk drinking guidelines. Primary analysis will measure the proportion of risky drinkers offered an alcohol intervention in each CDSS arm at baseline. Patients will be contacted by phone or email to track smoking cessation and alcohol consumption rates at 6- and 12-month follow up. Upon completion of the trial, the effect of different clinical decision support systems on practitioner behavior, and on client tobacco and alcohol use, will be discussed. If the CDSS successfully promotes SBIRT for risky alcohol use in a primary care setting and/or improves patient-level outcomes, including smoking cessation rates and alcohol use reduction, this tool can be used as a model for other web-based behavior change interventions integrated into primary care practice.
Conditions
Conditions (1)
Free-text conditions as registered, with the CancerIndex entity they were reconciled to and the match type.
| Condition (as posted) | Mapped entity | Match | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cancer | Malignant Neoplasm | ALIAS | 0.90 |
Interventions
Interventions (1)
| Intervention | Type | Mapped drug | Match |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brief alcohol intervention | Behavioral | — | UNRESOLVED |
Design
Arms and outcomes
Arms (2)
- type
- NO_INTERVENTION
- label
- Control - Group A
- description
- When a patient is identified as consuming alcohol above CCS guidelines (based on mandatory baseline questionnaire) the practitioner in Group A will not receive computer alerts but will still have access to the alcohol consumption data as part of the baseline assessment (Screening). Healthcare providers will have access to all the same resources available as the intervention clinic (Treatment as usual).
- type
- EXPERIMENTAL
- label
- Intervention - Group B
- description
- When a patient is identified as consuming alcohol above CCS guidelines (based on mandatory baseline questionnaire) the practitioner in Group B will receive computer alerts (Screening). The alert will provide a 5 minute script (Brief Intervention) for the health care providers to relay to patients and the ability to print or email a self-help resource to the patient each time the patient visits (Referral to Treatment).
- interventionNames
- Behavioral: Brief alcohol intervention
Primary outcomes (1)
Eligibility
Eligibility (as posted)
- Sex
- All
Show eligibility criteria text
Inclusion Criteria: * Participating clinics must be Family Health Team, Community Health Centre, or Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic (primary care clinics) participating in the Smoking Treatment for Ontario Patients (STOP) program * Clinic must use online portal to complete STOP questionnaires, in English, in real-time with patient Exclusion Criteria: * Non-primary care clinics participating in STOP program * Clinics who conduct STOP questionnaires exclusively on paper, or in French, or not in real-time with patient
References
Publications (4)
- DERIVEDMinian N, Noormohamed A, Lingam M, Zawertailo L, Le Foll B, Rehm J, Giesbrecht N, Samokhvalov AV, Baliunas D, Selby P. Integrating a brief alcohol intervention with tobacco addiction treatment in primary care: qualitative study of health care practitioner perceptions. Addict Sci Clin Pract. 2021 Mar 16;16(1):17. doi: 10.1186/s13722-021-00225-x. PMID 33726843
- DERIVEDMinian N, Baliunas D, Noormohamed A, Zawertailo L, Giesbrecht N, Hendershot CS, Le Foll B, Rehm J, Samokhvalov AV, Selby PL. The effect of a clinical decision support system on prompting an intervention for risky alcohol use in a primary care smoking cessation program: a cluster randomized trial. Implement Sci. 2019 Aug 23;14(1):85. doi: 10.1186/s13012-019-0935-x. PMID 31443663
- DERIVEDMinian N, Noormohamed A, Zawertailo L, Baliunas D, Giesbrecht N, Le Foll B, Rehm J, Samokhvalov A, Selby PL. A method for co-creation of an evidence-based patient workbook to address alcohol use when quitting smoking in primary care: a case study. Res Involv Engagem. 2018 Feb 5;4:4. doi: 10.1186/s40900-018-0086-2. eCollection 2018. PMID 29445521
- DERIVEDMinian N, Baliunas D, Zawertailo L, Noormohamed A, Giesbrecht N, Hendershot CS, Le Foll B, Rehm J, Samokhvalov A, Selby PL. Combining alcohol interventions with tobacco addictions treatment in primary care-the COMBAT study: a pragmatic cluster randomized trial. Implement Sci. 2017 May 18;12(1):65. doi: 10.1186/s13012-017-0595-7. PMID 28521782