We are halfway through 2024, and over the past 6 months SCLC has been busy developing a new strategic plan. Our world is constantly evolving, and tobacco products, policies, and behaviors are different from those even in the past 5 years. Updating our strategic plan will allow us to think intentionally and critically about our mission and vision, integrate perspectives from internal and external stakeholders on SCLC’s direction, and identify new strategies and partnerships to achieve our mission and vision. I am happy to announce that we’ve accomplished our goal of developing an operational strategic plan and are now beginning the exciting and challenging work of implementing it.
First, let’s talk about the continuation and strengths of SCLC’s flagship:
- Providing education on the evolving landscape of tobacco and nicotine products, tobacco control policies, evidence-based tobacco treatment, and ways to reduce tobacco-related disparities through our webinar series.
- Providing technical assistance by developing and disseminating tobacco treatment toolkits and resources to state and local partners.
- Increasing community capacity to treat tobacco use by training behavioral health providers and community advocates.
While most of SCLC’s mission and vision remain unchanged, we identified six key areas for enhancement and growth:
- Implementing the Collective Impact Action Model. In its prior work with federal, state, and local partnerships, SCLC had used the Performance Partnership Model 1 to foster interdisciplinary collaboration. To create population-level and systemic change in reducing tobacco-related inequities, moving forward, we will adopt a Collective Impact model.2 Collective impact is a collaboration between partners that is built on the foundation of equity and includes guiding principles that allow for co-creating solutions and actions to achieve systemic change. These guiding principles include a shared vision, shared measurements, mutually reinforcing activities, and a strong foundation for communication.
- A greater focus on lived experience. Our enhanced community engagement plan will build upon the work we have done to further integrate lived experience as a foundational aspect of all aspects of our work. Lived experiences foster a diversity of perspectives, which are integral to reducing disparities in tobacco use.
- Expanding our expertise in tobacco and nicotine product use. The landscape of tobacco products is evolving, and people are using more than one form of tobacco and/or nicotine product. We will expand and build our expertise to include cessation resources for other tobacco and nicotine products.
- Deepening our inroads into priority populations. Tobacco use disproportionately impacts communities that face extreme poverty, justice system involvement, structural racism, and inequities. Evidence-based tobacco treatment is available, but we need approaches to better reach and increase the uptake of treatment in those communities that also address structural inequities that lead to high rates. Our future work will focus specifically on addressing tobacco use, behavioral health, and health equity in these disproportionately impacted populations using both research and implementation sciences methods.
- Diversifying our educational impact. Educational tools are evolving to include different interfaces, learning systems, and AI. We will explore these tools to diversify our educational resources and offer information and learning experiences through multiple media.
- Diversifying our cessation workforce. A major part of SCLC’s work is building capacity. While our work already integrates community capacity building, we will begin supporting pipeline development by integrating scholars from public health, behavioral, and social sciences disciplines into our work. In doing so, we will support the development of a diverse workforce (including our very own at SCLC) that more closely resembles our communities.
We know that achieving these goals is no small feat, but we are excited to start the process of building on our 20-year legacy and expanding in ways that will address and eliminate the large disparities in tobacco use in the US. None of this work would be possible without you—our partners and collaborators—and we look forward to our collective partnerships, your input, and feedback as we begin this process of re-envisioning and evolving.
But that’s not all we’ve been up to. SCLC has been busy with other projects over the past 6 months. Here are some of the highlights.
- National Partnership on Behavioral Health and Tobacco Use, a cornerstone of SCLC’s collaborative efforts to change, was awarded funding in July 2024 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Over the next two years, the National Partnership will focus on reducing significant disparities in tobacco use within behavioral health populations in the US. This funding will also support the development and implementation of an intersectionality-oriented curriculum and toolkits to address the intersections between race and ethnicity and sex and gender and tobacco use.
- In April 2024, SCLC co-hosted with the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, “It’s About a Billion Lives Symposium”. This year’s symposiums featured esteemed speakers who spoke about ending the tobacco epidemic, along with presentations from faculty and other scholars on several topics addressing cessation and equity. A recording of the symposium is available for viewing on our website.
- SCLC hosted several other webinars this year, including:
- Lastly, please welcome the newest member of our team, Stephanie Koenig, MPH, our new Communications Specialist. Stephanie is a joint hire between SCLC and the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education and is one example of our collaborative effort to better align, coordinate, and create synergy between our tobacco centers here at UCSF. Please join me in welcoming Stephanie to our teams!
With that, I wish you a wonderful and restful summer. Thank you for your continued support.
References
1. Revell CC, Meriwether MB. Applying the performance partnership model to smoking cessation: lessons learned by the smoking cessation leadership center. Health Promot Pract. Nov 2011;12(6 Suppl 2):125S-9S. doi:10.1177/1524839911414409
2. Collective Impact Forum. What is Collective Impact. Available at: https://collectiveimpactforumorg/what-is-collective-impact/. Accessed on August 4, 2024.