Assisting Clients with Quitting – How to Talk the Talk for Successful Tobacco Cessation – Part One, co-hosted with NBHN

Frank Vitale, National Director of the Pharmacy Partnership for Tobacco Cessation, has worked in the smoking cessation field since 1987 designing cessation programs, educating over 20,000 health professionals in how to help patients stop tobacco use, and counseling nearly 10,000 patients to quit. He received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. Vincent College in 1974 and a Master’s Degree in Psychology from Duquesne University in 1988. He entered the field as a Health Educator, then as Clinic Coordinator for the Lung Health Study, researching the differential effects of smoking cessation and an inhaled medication (Atrovent) on the prevention of COPD in identified high risk individuals. Frank followed this by becoming Project Director of Lung Health Study II.

Subsequently he created a six-hour CE program, the International Smoking Cessation Specialist Program, designed to teach pharmacists how to do smoking cessation counseling, writing the patient support booklets that accompany this training as well as all auxiliary materials. This program has been presented throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico, Spain and the United Kingdom. In addition, he contributed content material for the RX for Change curriculum. From 2007- 2012 Frank continued to provide cessation counseling training to pharmacists through various project with the CS2Day program. Recently he designed a cessation training program and intervention protocol for psychologist in Beijing, China as well as for the HY VEE grocery chain in eight Midwestern states.

He is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor at Purdue’s College of Pharmacy working on a myriad of projects designed to train pharmacists, physicians, respiratory therapists, and other clinicians interested in adding cessation counseling to their practice.