Lisa Fucito, PhD, director of the Tobacco Treatment Service at Smilow Cancer Hospital, helps patients quit or reduce cigarette smoking and their use of other tobacco and nicotine products such as e-cigarettes.
Fucito, a clinical psychologist, provides individual counseling tailored to a person’s circumstances. If they need to quit smoking for an upcoming surgery, she might meet with someone multiple times a week to help them quickly replace the ritual of lighting up at particular times with different habits. For another person uncertain about quitting smoking, she might focus counseling on increasing their motivation by emphasizing the benefits of smoking cessation at all ages.
The Smilow service also provides prescriptions for nicotine-replacement therapies such as “the patch,” gum, lozenges, inhalers, and other FDA-approved medications such as varenicline (Chantix) and bupropion (Zyban). Additionally, patients are advised of potential tobacco harm reduction strategies such as switching to alternative tobacco products (e-cigarettes, oral nicotine products) in place of cigarettes.
Prior to attending graduate school, Fucito worked in a psychiatric hospital helping people with alcohol and substance use disorders. “I noticed that many of these patients were smoking, but we were not addressing it,” she says. “I wanted to better understand this primary substance use disorder and help reduce the substantial public health burden of tobacco use.”
Fucito appreciates how hard it can be for people to change a lifelong habit like cigarette smoking, but that is also why she finds this work so rewarding. One woman who wanted to quit in advance of cancer treatment told Fucito that without her support, she would not have been able to stop smoking. “It is a tremendous privilege to help people change one of their most important health behaviors and change their health trajectory,” she says.
An associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, Fucito studies new treatment strategies to help people with their tobacco use including a pre-surgical intervention for patients with cancer and e-cigarette cessation. She is also interested in how technology (e.g., smartphones, biosensors, social media, electronic health records) can increase the reach and effectiveness of interventions and improve health outcomes across substance use disorders.
