Carlson students find new trends in UMN smoking study

By Rose Semenov

Minnesota Carlson students are unearthing additional findings from a smoking study led by a University of Minnesota Medical School professor that could help more people quit smoking.

Dr. Steven Fu published a study in 2016 that found smokers who received proactive outreach, such as personalized mailers and phone counseling, during a smoking treatment program were more likely to quit smoking than participants receiving usual care without outreach. After the research funding elapsed, Fu shelved the data. 

“When you have a study like that, while we published a number of articles, there is still a lot of richness to the dataset that sometimes goes untapped,” says Fu. Another look at the data could reveal ways to improve the proactive outreach in the treatment program. 

In the Fall 2025 semester, Fu partnered with Carlson Information & Decision Sciences Professor Jason Chan and Carlson Analytics Lab Senior Director of Professional Communication Lee Thomas. Chan and Thomas co-teach the undergraduate capstone course Business Analytics in Action, where students apply their data analytics skills by working with a real-world client.

“These students are on that cutting edge of data analysis, and they can apply that to your existing dataset to help you identify some valuable insights,” says Fu. 

Exploring the data

Fu turned the data over to the Carlson students, asking them to look for associations, specifically among different demographic groups. For Elise Gorman, a senior Marketing and Business Analytics double-major, the project was an opportunity to dive deep into the “nitty gritty” side of data.

“In the other classes, the data's already kind of structured, there's kind of a clear path laid out for you,” says Gorman. “This was the first time, for me, that even the professors were new to the data, and they were like, ‘We don't know what you'll find. There could be anything.’ It was messy. We actually had to go through those steps that have been done for us in other classes, which was cool to see the whole process start to finish.”

The students quickly hit a roadblock as clear patterns failed to emerge. “We had to think, be more creative, and dig a little deeper where we hadn't really been pushed to do that before,” says Gorman.

Finding connections

Eventually, associations began to surface. Among them was the influential role familial relationships can play in different cultural groups. Students found, across all racial demographics in the study, Native American participants were less likely to accept treatment if a parent also smoked.

“We suggest targeting the whole family instead of just one person,” said Iqra Chan, a senior Management Information Systems and Business Analytics double-major. “We recommended exploring ways to tailor messages to family dynamics and to actively involve the parent.”

Fu says the familial finding echoed current work underway by his research team, highlighting the value of incorporating a household-level approach to provide better social support where culturally relevant.

The students’ analysis also revealed that frequent alcohol misuse increased the likelihood of smoking again, suggesting treatment plans should consider an integrated strategy to reduce alcohol and tobacco use.

Communicating the story

Uncovering the findings, however, was just one part of the process. Now, the students had to tell the story of the data.

“We have to think about how we present it to the client and make things easy to digest for non-technical people,” says Chan. “That's when we put a lot of time into making the slide deck and making a storyline, so people will care about what you’re talking about.”

The storytelling aspect stood out to Fu, who appreciated seeing a healthcare topic presented from a business perspective.

“We're all part of the same University. We have different strengths that we can bring,” says Fu. “The Carlson students were very good at distilling their key points, providing a take-home message, and presenting that in the overview. In healthcare, we tend to get lost in the weeds of the numbers. So for me, it’s interesting to think about how we can start incorporating some of that into our communications.”

Fu says the students’ findings will inform strategy moving forward as the researchers examine ways to enhance the impact of the proactive outreach in the smoking treatment program.