Today is the 37th Annual Great American Smokeout®. Sponsored by the American Cancer Society, the annual event challenges smokers to start the quit process by joining thousands of other Americans in quitting for the day. The thought being – if you can quit for a day, you can quit for life.
Across the state the Arizona Smokers Helpline – or ASHLine – is highlighting the success of the free quit coach service. Serving Arizona for nearly 15 years, ASHLine combines the support of a quit coach with nicotine replacement therapies (NRT) such as the patch, gum, lozenge or medication to help improve a tobacco users change of quitting and staying quit. ASHLine boasts a 40 percent quit rate which is among the leaders of quitlines nationally. Contact ASHLine online or on the phone at 1-800-55-66-222.
Posts Tagged ‘quitline’
The Great American Smokeout
November 15th, 2012What’s a GASO?
November 17th, 2011Today is the Great American Smoke Out – started by the American Cancer Society to encourage smokers to quit, even if it is just for one day. Arizona is doing very well compared to the rest of the country when you talk about stopping smoking. Our state is down to 16% of the adult population that smokes – the national average is 21%. But those that are left are the most addicted – so we need to help them any way we can.
The Arizona Smokers’ Helpline is expanding its arsenal of resources to help smokers quit tobacco with the addition of the Call It Quits app. The app debuted on ASHLine’s Facebook page this week and will soon be introduced as an iPhone app.
Support from friends and family are essential and things like nicotine replacement medication or patches can help make the difference between success and failure when quitting smoking. People in Arizona can tap into free telephone quit coaching through the ASHLine at 1-800-55-66-222 and free online quit coaching services via WebQuit™ at www.ASHLine.org. The Arizona Smokers’ Helpline has one of the best quit rates in the country and has been helping people for 15 years.
Business owners can help too – take a look at your health plans and see if they support your employees who want to quit. It can be a good investment – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates comprehensive smoking-cessation benefits cost between $1.20 and $4.80 per person per year, miniscule when compared with the $1,623-per-smoker per year in excess medical expenditures.
Encouraging Trends in New Bi-annual Tobacco Prevention Report
July 12th, 2011Part of the authorizing statute for our tobacco prevention programs includes a requirement that we develop a bi-annual report of our progress and activities. Just two years ago, we reported that we were shifting to an “evidence-based” approach to our prevention activities. In other words, we shifted our intervention strategies to focus on approaches that have been statistically proven to work. This year’s report shows that our shift in approach clearly paid dividends.
Our newly published bi-annual report demonstrates that Arizona has made great strides in several important areas of tobacco control. We’re now ranked in the “Best Ten” of several major categories including: lowest exposure to secondhand smoke in the home and workplace, lowest tobacco use among pregnant women, biggest drop in overall tobacco use, biggest drop in heavy tobacco use among youth, low tobacco use among women, and low overall tobacco use (the 2010 smoking rate is now just 13.5% percent in AZ).
More Arizonans are using nicotine replacement therapies, as evidenced in a 42% jump in nicotine replacement use among AHCCCS members (we pay for this using our tobacco prevention funds). Over the last 2 years we’ve increased the number of Arizonans using the ASHLine by 300%, and a nation-leading 6% of active tobacco users in AZ called on our quitline to get help. More people are getting real help via the Internet, and are being linked to successful programs by their doctors. We’ll continue to press ahead with this evidenced based approach over the coming year.
Well done team!
Encouraging Trends in New Bi-annual Tobacco Prevention Report
July 11th, 2011Part of the authorizing statute for our tobacco prevention programs includes a requirement that we develop a bi-annual report of our progress and activities. Just two years ago, we reported that we were shifting to an “evidence-based” approach to our prevention activities. In other words- we shifted our intervention strategies to focus on approaches that have been statistically proven to work. This year’s report shows that our shift in approach clearly paid dividends.
Our newly published bi-annual report demonstrates that Arizona has made great strides in several important areas of tobacco control. We’re now ranked in the “Best Ten” of several major categories, including: lowest exposure to secondhand smoke in the home and workplace, lowest tobacco use among pregnant women, biggest drop in overall tobacco use, biggest drop in heavy tobacco use among youth, low tobacco use among women, and low overall tobacco use (the 2010 smoking rate is now just 13.5% percent in AZ).
More Arizonans are using nicotine replacement therapies, as evidenced in a 42% jump in nicotine replacement use among AHCCCS members (we pay for this using our tobacco prevention funds). Over the last 2 years we’ve increased the number of Arizonans using the ASHLine by 300%; and a nation-leading 6% of active tobacco users in AZ called on our quitline to get help. More people are getting real help via the Internet, and are being linked to successful programs by their doctors. We’ll continue to press ahead with this evidenced based approach over the coming year. Well done team!
Arizona Breaking Through the National Smoking Trend
September 10th, 2010A new report from the CDC this week showed that the smoking rate across the US has stayed flat at about 20% over the last 5 years. Not so in Arizona, where we’ve decreased from 20% in 2005 to 16% in 2009, according to our latest BRFS report. As is the case across the country, the folks in Arizona that make the least amount of money are the most likely to smoke, which is why we’ve focused our tobacco prevention and cessation (quitting) efforts on that demographic- with aggressive targeted marketing, quitline services (including quit coaches) and by paying AHCCCS (using our voter-protected tobacco control funds) to cover medicine to help people succeed. We also think that our youth prevention campaign and the implementation of the Smoke Free Arizona Act in 2007 are factors that have helped us buck the national trend.
