Dr. Jonathan Bricker receives the Endowed Chair in Cancer Prevention

When Jonathan Bricker, PhD, graduated from the University of Washington’s clinical psychology program in 2003, he faced a consequential choice: Take the traditional route of developing programs to help patients one by one, or gamble on a broader, riskier vision for building programs that could help many thousands of people change behaviors that drive cancer risk.

He chose scale. 

Bricker joined Fred Hutch Cancer Center that same year, determined to reduce the toll of preventable cancer deaths. About 40% of annual cancer deaths are linked to modifiable risks, including smoking and excessive weight. Over the last two decades, he has worked toward that goal by developing mobile apps and other scalable tools for behavioral change. Each was built on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), which focuses on being open to feelings, cravings and thoughts instead of trying to avoid them. 

Today Bricker is a professor in the Cancer Prevention Program of Fred Hutch’s Public Health Sciences Division and leads the Health and Behavioral Innovations in Technology (HABIT) Lab. And in recognition of his commitment to helping people change behaviors that can lead to cancer, he was recently awarded the Endowed Chair in Cancer Prevention.

“I am so grateful for this honor,” Bricker said. “It speaks volumes about how much Fred Hutch values cancer prevention and about their commitment to the work we're doing in the HABIT Lab.” Bricker’s research is part of Fred Hutch’s decades-long, collaborative effort across disciplines like psychology, epidemiology and biostatistics to not only improve treatments for cancer, but also prevent it altogether.

Endowed chairs give scientists critically important flexible funding to test promising ideas early, before larger grants are in place. Visionary donors have endowed more than 50 chairs at Fred Hutch to date, honoring faculty members and giving them flexible funding for innovative research. Endowment gifts are critical to long-term sustainability and a cornerstone of the Campaign for Fred Hutch, which is bringing together our community to radically increase the pace and scale of discovery.

Bricker plans to use the funding provided by the endowed chair to double down on “advancing tobacco and behavior change that’s scalable,” he said, something he’s done for more than two decades by consistently leveraging donor support to launch pilot studies that lead to significantly larger federal grants.

“Jonathan continues to be a tremendous advocate for and leader in Fred Hutch’s cancer prevention efforts,” said Fred Hutch President and Director Thomas J. Lynch Jr., MD, holder of the Raisbeck Endowed Chair. “His research consistently seeks to deliver evidence-based psychological approaches using accessible and innovative technologies to treat addiction and reduce cancer rates among high-risk populations. We are proud to recognize his contributions to this vitally important aspect of our mission.”

From skepticism to enthusiastic embrace

ACT was still a relatively new concept in psychology when Bricker began working at Fred Hutch. Developed in the 1980s by clinical psychologist Steven Hayes, PhD, it was a dramatic departure from previous approaches to sparking behavioral change. Bricker was skeptical. But then a series of phone conversations with a woman in Arkansas in 2007 changed his mind.

Bricker was working on a small pilot study that looked at using ACT to help patients stop smoking, and the woman was a participant. She would tell him that her body was “screaming for a cigarette,” and rather than try to distract her or encourage her to think about something else, he’d ask her to focus on that discomfort: 

Where exactly do you feel it? 

In my chest. 

OK, let’s just slow down and notice that. We’re just observing. Notice where you feel it in your chest, and just notice that sensation.

“And as we continued to talk,” Bricker remembered, “she said, ‘Oh … the craving just kind of went away.’” The woman eventually quit smoking as a result of participating in the trial, after trying multiple times with other methods. 

“That turned my skepticism into a view that this might be something worth pursuing,” Bricker said.

Inspired by his experience with that trial — as well as the benefits he gained from applying the method to his own tendency to worry — Bricker has incorporated ACT into nearly all his research at Fred Hutch for the last 20 years. He began with a series of websites, followed by a portfolio of apps designed to guide and support people as they quit smoking.

One of the first major successes was iCanQuit, an app that helps users build skills for handling cravings, emotions and thoughts that can trigger smoking. Its development was accelerated by support from the Hartwell Innovation Fund, which helped Bricker launch a pilot study that later led to a $3.1 million grant from the National Cancer Institute. A larger trial found iCanQuit more effective than similar apps, and it is now the only smoking-cessation app listed by NCI as proven efficacious. 

Bricker’s success with iCanQuit led to the development of QuitBot. Released in 2024, the app uses artificial intelligence to offer tailored, evidence-based conversational support to people trying to quit smoking.

Championing prevention on multiple fronts

More recently, Bricker has expanded his efforts to another major cancer risk factor: excessive weight. Later this year, the HABIT Lab will publish results from a full-scale trial of WeLNES, a telehealth-based program that helps participants build skills for handling food cravings, physical discomfort and other challenges that can make weight loss difficult. Like iCanQuit, WeLNES benefited from early donor support that later led to a significant federal grant.

For Bricker, the point is not simply to prove that an intervention works. It is to make it widely usable. Which is why his smoking-cessation apps are free to download. 

“Giving away what we’ve tested is a strong tenet of the HABIT Lab,” he said.

Bricker’s long-range ambition is to help 1 million people quit smoking or lose weight through evidence-based scalable interventions. The endowed chair could help move that vision forward by expanding access to existing apps at no cost and seeding new studies on ACT paired with GLP-1 medications, teen vaping cessation, and fully autonomous digital coaching. “The goal is not just to discover what works,” he said, “but to make sure it reaches the people who need it most.”

For Bricker, the long game is clear: create evidence-based interventions, prove they work, and then make them accessible at scale.