Jayson J. Spas, PhD, MS, LMFT

Smoking and obesity are the first and second leading causes of preventable deaths in the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Standard intervention for both health risks is either behavioral, pharmacologic or a combination of both. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a behavioral intervention and empirically supported treatment (EST) that focuses on acceptance and mindfulness. Although ACT has proven efficacy for both smoking cessation and weight loss as separate behaviors, to date, there are no ACT studies that simultaneously target both smoking cessation and weight loss. The aims of my current project are to 1) develop and 2) test a novel ACT-based intervention that simultaneously targets smoking cessation and weight loss. To achieve these aims, this project will complete a small pilot and a preliminary randomized controlled trial (RCT) to compare the novel intervention to a general health control.