Tobacco addiction causes 438,000 deaths in the United States each year, making it the leading preventable cause of death. In addition, some 8.6 million Americans live with serious smoking-related illness. Of the 44.5 million current smokers, 70 percent say that they would like to quit. But without assistance, less than five percent are able to stop smoking. They need help from health professionals, whose advice serves as a powerful motivator.

The Smoking Cessation Leadership Center (SCLC) is a national program office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that aims to increase smoking cessation rates and increase the number of health professionals who help smokers quit. The Center creates partnerships for results with a variety of groups and institutions to develop and implement action plans around smoking cessation. Partnerships with dental hygienists, nurses, pharmacists, emergency physicians, hospitals, labor unions, family physicians, the Veterans Health Administration and myriad other groups all lead toward the same goal: saving lives by increasing cessation rates and cessation interventions.

IN THE NEWS:

Chicago Second Wind produces newsletter!!!  

Click to read the latest news on the Chicagoland Smoking Cessation initiative: http://rhamc.informz.net/rhamc/archives/archive_97298.html 

New York Times - "Study Finds Big Social Factor in Quitting Smoking"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/science/22smoke.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin  

O Magazine

ADHA and Wrigley Partner for National Quick Card Distribution Campaign

The American Dental Hygienists' Association and the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company sponsor a national distribution of "Quit Now" cards. To learn more visit www.askadviserefer.org.  

VA in the Vanguard: Building on Success in Smoking Cessation published proceeding is now available

To download an electronic pdf version of the publication and for more information about the project click here.

SCLC Director Authors “Clinician’s Corner” section of JAMA issue

Steven Schroeder, director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center, authored an article entitled “What to Do With a Patient Who Smokes,” published in a recent issue of JAMA—the Journal of the American Medical Association—on July 27, 2005 (v.294 n.4).

SCLC Grantee Recognized in May/June issue of The American Nurse

Tobacco Free Nurses, funded in part by the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center, was featured on the first page of the May/June 2005 issue of The American Nurse—the official publication of the American Nurses Association. The article focused on the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative, and the work of health professionals in this area, and highlighted the Tobacco Free Nurses.

For more on the Tobacco Free Nurses, visit http://www.tobaccofreenurses.org
For more information on The American Nurse, visit http://nursingworld.org/tan

Kentucky Gov. Calls Press Conference to Promote National Quitline

Kentucky has the highest smoking rate in the nation. But it also has a governor concerned about this problem. Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who is a graduate of the University Of Kentucky College Of Medicine, called a press conference in early July to announce the state’s use of the quitline 1-800-Quit-Now. The telephone service will provide brief intervention and support for people who want to stop smoking or using other tobacco products. During the press conference, members of the media and attendees were given small, plastic quitline cards as promotional tools, created by the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center. Kentucky's smoking prevalence has dropped to 27% over the past three years.

For more information, visit http://kentucky.gov/Newsroom/chfs/chfs070605b.htm

Revell Named Co-Chair of NAQC Promotion Task Force

Connie Revell, the deputy director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center, was named the co-chair of a promotion task force for the North American Quitline Consortium, in July 2005. The task force is charged with two aims—working on communications between quitlines and national funders regarding promotional activities and developing a report on the promotions of quitlines and their influence.

For more information on the North American Quitline Consortium, visit http://www.naquitline.org/

American Medical News asks: Time to enhance "5 A’s" of Smoking Cessation?

A article in the American Medical News (July 25, 2005) looks into ways that the guidelines for how physicians help patients quit smoking can be improved. In the article, Smoking Cessation Leadership Director Steven Schroeder is quoted as noting that while the five A’s are an honorable set of principles, there are other ways, including use of the quitline, for those physicians who cannot follow these full guidelines.

For more information, visit http://www.ama-assn.org

SCLC Deputy Director and Director Author Commentary for Nicotine & Tobacco Research

Connie C. Revell, Deputy Director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center, and Steven A. Schroeder, Director, authored the concluding commentary in the April 2005 issue of Nicotine & Tobacco Research—the journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. The article is entitled “Simplicity matters: using system-level changes to encourage clinician intervention in helping tobacco users quit.”

For more information, visit http://www.ntrjournal.org

SCLC Partner wins the 2005 Wrigley/ADHA tobacco intervention award

The California Dental Hygienists Association, a partner of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center (SCLC) has been awarded the 2005 Wrigley/ADHA Tobacco Intervention Award given at the American Dental Hygienists Association Annual Session this month in Las Vegas, Nevada, in recognition of its Gold Rush campaign. This campaign, created by the SCLC and the California Dental Hygienists Association, asks every registered dental hygienist in California to hand out at least one “Take Charge” gold card, a marketing device with the helpline’s phone number, within one year. Participants are asked to log in to a website to keep track of their referrals to the helpline.

For more information on this program, visit http://www.cdha.org/professionals/goldrush/goldrushprizes.htm

Stop-smoking effort wins national award

Providence Health Plan received the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Community Leadership Award for its work with “Make It Your Business: Insure a Tobacco-Free Workforce.” AHIP, a national trade association representing nearly 1,300 health plans that cover 200 million people, announced the award at its Annual Meeting in June.

The Make it Your Business plan stems from work with the Tobacco-Free Coalition of Oregon (TOFCO), a grant recipient of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center. Working with the Providence Health plan and other leaders in business, labor, insurance and health policy on the “Make It Your Business” plan, TOFCO urges businesses and insurers to voluntarily cover and promote help for smokers who want to quit. An 11-year-old coalition that works to stem the health and economic toll of tobacco, TOFCO distributes an Employer’s Toolkit, talks with business and health plan decision-makers, offers continuing education courses, and publishes opinion pieces about the value of effective stop-smoking programs. After the initial success of Make It Your Business in Oregon, TOFCO is exploring the promise of a national campaign that runs parallel and a couple of years behind Oregon’s.

Providence and some other Oregon health insurers had worked for eight years with TOFCO’s Health Systems Task Force to broaden stop-smoking treatment before this latest effort to engage health care purchasers and health insurance agents through the Make It Your Business campaign. The campaign started as a pilot project in July 2002 with a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant.

For more information on Tobacco-Free Coalition of Oregon and on the Make it Your Business plan, visit http://www.tobaccofreeoregon.org/index.html.