Clinical trials

Lung cancer screening (LCS) can reduce lung cancer-related mortality by 20%, but only 5-10% of eligible individuals have received an initial LCS. The goal of this study is to partner with community stakeholders to jointly develop and pilot test a multi-component community health worker-delivered intervention targeting key barriers to improve LCS and tobacco treatment utilization. The proposed activities will lay the groundwork for a subsequent R01 grant, conducting a fully powered randomized clinical trial to establish CHWs as an evidence-based practice that will facilitate access to screening and tobacco treatment, to reduce lung cancer mortality.

The goal of this clinical trial is to evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of Relational Health Enhanced Parenting Support (RHEP), an implementation strategy designed to improve delivery of evidence-based parenting support within family-focused peer recovery support services (PRSS), for parents with substance use disorders (SUDs) receiving services through the FIRST Steps Together (FST) home visiting program. The main questions it aims to answer are: 1. Does FST plus RHEP improve parenting-related outcomes, substance use disorder treatment retention, and reduction in substance use compared with FST alone? 2. How do implementation processes vary across sites, and what role do peer recovery support specialists play in implementation and effectiveness outcomes? Researchers will compare FST alone to FST plus RHEP to determine whether RHEP enhances parenting support delivery and improves parent and recovery outcomes. Participants will: 1. Receive family-focused peer recovery support services through the FIRST Steps Together (FST) program; 2. Complete surveys and assessments related to parenting, recovery, and substance use over time; 3. Participate in follow-up data collection to evaluate treatment retention and recovery outcomes. Peer recovery support specialists participating in the study will: 1. Receive training and consultation. 2. Use implementation tools and supports designed to improve delivery of evidence-based parenting support. 3. Participate in implementation-related assessments and activities.

Mothers with substance use disorders face unprecedented stress in their roles as parents working to care for their children while maintaining healthy recovery. Mothering from the Inside Out (MIO) is the first attachment-based parenting intervention designed specifically for mothers in recovery from substance use disorders that has been shown to have benefit for both mother and child in multiple randomized controlled trials. This project will: (a) test the effectiveness of MIO among women in outpatient treatment under 'real-world' conditions, (b) evaluate implementation in different settings, and (c) assess key implementation factors to support optimal uptake and treatment in future dissemination studies; closing an important science-to-service gap for an underserved population in an effort to support maternal and child health simultaneously.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) affects approximately 16 million Americans and is characterized by recurrent exacerbations that lead to 1.5 million Emergency Department visits and 700,000 hospitalizations annually. Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is a structured program of exercise and self-management support that has been proven to relieve shortness of breath and increase quality of life when initiated after an exacerbation, but unfortunately, few eligible patients participate. This project will compare the effectiveness of two novel strategies - one involving video narratives of other patients telling their story of how they overcame challenges and completed PR, the other involving telephonic peer coaching with an individual with lived experience - to enhanced usual care, and to each other, at increasing patient participation in PR after an exacerbation.

Tobacco use remains the leading cause of death in the United States and contributes to more than 7 million hospitalizations annually. Being admitted to the hospital offers the perfect opportunity to support smoking cessation. Patients are motivated to quit because of their current illness and societal guidelines recommend clinicians should counsel patients and prescribe smoking cessation pharmacotherapy (SCP) to virtually all smokers. However, only 22% of patients are prescribed SCP while hospitalized, and only 1% are prescribed medications compatible with current guidelines. This failure is part of the reason 70-80% of hospitalized smokers eventually relapse. The relapse typically occurs within a few days of hospital discharge - well before outpatient follow-up can occur. The investigators aim to improve smoking cessation treatment and guideline adherence by utilizing the opportunity that hospitalization provides. The investigators have created a tobacco treatment team (T3) to overcome physicians' and patients' low use of current guideline smoking cessation medications. The team members are trained in tobacco treatment and will be led by a nurse practitioner (NPT3). The team will work together and 1) prescribe individually tailored and guideline-concordant SCP; 2) counsel and motivate patients to use SCP properly; and 3) manage a mobile phone-based text-messaging system to keep patients motivated and adherent to SCP. Our preliminary data suggest that such an approach is workable and acceptable to patients, physicians, and hospital administrators. The investigators will recruit 424 patients in the hospital who smoke with cardiopulmonary disease. These patients will be randomized to receive either usual care or personalized care with the NPT3 team. The investigators will compare rates of guideline-concordant SCP use at 1 week and exhaled carbon monoxide (eCO) verified smoking cessation at 6 months between patients randomized to the NPT3 team vs. usual care. The investigators will also measure the project's economic value from a hospital and payer perspective. Understanding the economic value will better inform hospital and insurance policies and sustainability. Finally, acceptability, generalizability, and sustainability measures will be assessed through qualitative interviews with patients, providers, and hospital leadership.

Patients who are found to have an aneurysm (bulge) in the abdominal aorta, which is the blood vessel in your abdomen (belly) that supplies blood to most of your lower body, including major organs and your legs. As an aneurysm expands, the walls of the aorta become weak and may rupture (break open), causing a major loss of blood with a high risk of serious problems and death. To avoid this risk, doctors repair aneurysms by either open surgery (incision) or endovascular surgery (covered stents to channel the blood flow). Juxtarenal aneurysms (those that come close to the kidney arteries) present a unique challenge as they are more dangerous to repair by open therapy and do not fit the standard approved endovascular devices. The purpose of this study is to assess the effects of the physician-modified endovascular graft (PMEG) by collecting information about the performance of this investigational medical device. The main graft looks like a pair of pants with very short legs. The top of the pants is placed in the aorta. Then, two smaller grafts go from the main graft and to your iliac arteries (the main arteries supplying blood to your abdomen and legs) to form the legs of the pair of pants. Each graft is packed into a small catheter (a long, flexible plastic tube) that is placed into your aorta through the femoral artery in your groin (top of your leg). The grafts are then placed in the correct position in your aorta by releasing them from the catheters. These grafts are investigational because the research physician has changed them to match patient anatomy (body make up) while protecting blood flow to important vessels. Once the grafts are attached inside the aorta, they will support the area of the aorta that is weakened and bulging. Modifications of the graft will include between one and four holes (fenestrations) near the top of the graft. The holes allow the graft to be located above the renal arteries (the blood vessels that supply blood to your kidneys) without blocking the blood flow to them. One or more of the arteries will also be treated with a stent (metal wire tube) to help keep the arteries open and to keep the arteries connected to the holes that are made for the graft. The device is custom modified for patient specific anatomy. The information collected from this study will be used to show how well patients do when treated with the modified graft, both immediately after surgery and over a long period of time. After the procedure, labs, CT imaging with contrast, XRays and ultrasounds will be done to check the graft at intervals 1 month, 6 months, 12 months and yearly for 5 years. These are standard surveillance studies performed on any endovascular aneurysm repair.

. New- onset postoperative atrial fibrillation (POAF) is a common complication after cardiac surgery and its occurrence increases with age. POAF can result in clinically significant morbidity and mortality. The national trend in the US is that the population older than 65 years is increasing, making healthcare expenditure related to POAF to be a major burden on health care system. Effective treatment of POAF is imperative in ensuring quality of care and reduction of costs. In 2021 there is a projected total of 377,763 cardiovascular surgeries in the US alone with approximately half of which will have POAF with longer postoperative length of stay (+3.9 days) and higher discharge costs (+$13,993) than no-POAF patients (Reference: Ann Thorac Surg. 2015 Jan;99(1):109-14). Amiodarone, the currently used therapy, is often insufficient to prevent POAF and has multiple side-effects. In this study, we expect to improve the incidence of POAF by using a common acne drug (Minocycline) that is safe and that could be incorporated in clinical care of this disease.

The increasing morbidity and mortality of the opioid epidemic has necessitated a reevaluation of current addiction treatment paradigms: medications for opioid use disorder, such as buprenorphine and methadone, are effective in decreasing one's risk of death and disability from opioid use, but are underutilized and often difficult to access. The 5000 Emergency Departments (EDs) in the US are potential additional locales for medication initiation, but currently only a small minority of ED patients with opioid use disorder are started on medications. This study will refine and pilot an intervention called Talk About It which aims to foster patient-centered care, 'meet patients where they are' for addiction treatment, and increase treatment initiation and adherence via facilitating Shared Decision-Making in the ED around these potentially life-saving options.