For Immediate Release: January 23, 2025
By Alison Medley
Launching a new team science initiative, UH researcher, Dr. Lorra Garey has been awarded an IGNITE grant for her innovative smoking cessation research which helps African American smokers with HIV. Garey was awarded $35,000 funded by the HEALTH-RCMI Research Infrastructure Core and NIMHD.
“HIV used to be considered a death sentence, and now, it's not,” Garey said. “It is considered a chronic disease that can be managed with proper treatment. But what we find is that people living with HIV as they are aging are experiencing a lot more comorbidities and health complications relative to those without HIV and a lot of that is contributable to lifestyle behaviors. My overall goal is to help improve well-being and quality of life across all individuals."
For Garey, 2024 was a year defined by a series of prestigious awards and accomplishments, including a $4.7 million R01 award from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Garey has also recently been awarded an NIH planning grant award, an R34.
Garey underscored that the IGNITE award specifically builds upon a foundation for team science collaboration.
“I’m really excited about this project because it has helped us get into the biomarker space,” Garey said. “It has also provided a platform for a team science collaboration, which is leading to another project. We have another supplement that we plan to submit for the R01 that was recently funded. This supplement will be exploring sex hormones among women related to smoking. This approach to interdisciplinary science is also informing next steps in some of the other research that we are doing.”
For the IGNITE interdisciplinary project, Garey has significant aims—one of which is demonstrating the feasibility of collecting biospecimen among an underrepresented population with a stigmatized illness. The second aim is to explore specific biomarkers, including the C-reactive protein, commonly called CRP. This biomarker is linked to inflammation and implicated in several health conditions, including cardiovascular disease
“Understanding the role of biomarker data in cardiovascular disease among Black adults living with HIV who smoke can help inform intervention programs and a more precision medicine approach to care for this group,” Garey said. “Ultimately, these data can help us understand one potential avenue that leads to heath disparities experienced by the group, which has potential to inform next step intervention and care.”
Through the NIH R01 award, Garey’s overarching objective is to support a randomized trial of a mobile health intervention for smoking cessation. The intervention is an app called ESCAPE, and it has already proven effective in helping users quit smoking in addition to monitoring stress and anxiety.
“This work has the potential to have a real impact among Black adults living with HIV who smoke,” Garey said. “I am also excited to expand this work to individuals in rural communities because 40 percent of those who enroll will be from rural communities which is a severely underserved demographic. When you couple that with identifying as being Black or African American and having HIV, those people have such an elevated risk of being overlooked. We want to take this opportunity to address this head on to provide accessible care to these individuals.”
The randomized trial for the ESCAPE intervention involves 300 participants who also have the option of receiving nicotine replacement therapy. The retention rate for the the pilot study has been impressive, reaching 80 percent, Garey said.
“What we’re seeing with the metrics of engagement is that participants use the app,” Garey said. “They are sticking around for the study. Our retention for 6 months is incredibly high for the pilot trial. That’s really encouraging because this is a hard-to-reach, hard to treat population. Clearly, they are benefiting in some aspect from participating in this trial. There is so much potential to learn things from a theoretical perspective, but there is also a potential for impact and improved health.”
Garey emphasized how initial seed grants, such as Pilot Program Grants and Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) awards helped provide the springboard to a larger NIH grant like the R01. In fact, it was a NOSI grant that helped Garey secure the NIH $4.7 million award, and the study was entitled, “A Fully Automated and Culturally Adapted Health Intervention for Smoking Cessation Among Black Smokers with HIV.”
When Garey first spearheaded her research on smoking cessation, it ignited an interest and passion to discover what truly works to improve the health outcomes of underrepresented communities, including Black smokers with HIV. Garey believes it is also crucial that her research helps inform and improve access to effective treatment.
“With Black adults and Hispanic adults who are living with HIV, smoking is one thing that is contributing to worse overall quality of life and well-being,” Garey said. “But in addition to that, there are social determinants of health that are also contributing to these worse outcomes, including lack of access to effective treatment. That's one of the things that we are trying to overcome.”
The mobile intervention ESCAPE has been developed to be a resourceful mental health tool that stretches beyond an app to quit smoking. It also helps support Black smokers who are coping with stressors due to racism and discrimination.
“Through our work, we are also trying to offer support around experiences of racism and discrimination,” Garey said. “We want to be culturally tailored in a way that can help people feel supported, help them feel like there is a community here—and help them feel like our side has listened to feedback from the larger community to develop these materials.”
If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Alison Medley at 713.320.0933, or email aemedle2@central.uh.edu.
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