Posts Tagged ‘smoking cessation’

Tobacco Use & the Target Market

November 15th, 2012

One of the things you learn in business school is the importance of using the concept of a “target market” as a core of your business marketing plan.  That’s what we do when it comes to tobacco cessation.  We examine our tobacco surveillance data and look at demographic patterns for target populations and look for the leverage points to develop our interventions.  Since 50% of tobacco products are purchased by folks with a mental illness and/or chronic disease- this demographic is a key focus of our tobacco prevention strategies. 

We’ve been working hard for the last 3 years to make inroads into this target population with some pretty good success.  Our folks in the Division of Behavioral health and our Bureau of Tobacco and Chronic Disease and ASHLine have trained clinical behavioral health staff on how to get folks into smoking cessation (quit) services-  establishing systemic change within the behavioral health system for cessation services- moving Arizona toward being tobacco free.  This involves assessing every single patient at every single visit in our behavioral health system for tobacco use and providing them the opportunity to be referred for tobacco cessation coaching.  Since our initial efforts 3 years ago- ASHLine referrals from behavioral health locations have skyrocketed.  

The ASHLine referral development team is focusing training new nurse practitioners at Magellan’s Integrated Home Health on ASHLine Ask, Advice, Refer protocol & nicotine replacement therapy prescription guidelines.  Additionally, our Tobacco and Chronic Disease team submitted a manuscript to the CDC’s online journal Preventing Chronic Disease which describes the success of our interventions and illustrating how the behavioral health population is using cessation services and quitting tobacco at the same rate as the general population.

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CDC Kicks Off New Smoking Intervention Campaign Today

March 19th, 2012

The CDC is kicking off a new national smoking cessation campaign today called “Tips from Former Smokers”.  The new tobacco education campaign will begin airing today and will run nationally for 12 weeks.  Ads include television, radio, billboard, magazine, newspaper, theater, and online placements. In addition, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other channels will help spread the campaign’s message more broadly, particularly among younger audiences. 

The “Tips from Former Smokers” campaign features real people suffering as a result of smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke.  Most of them were diagnosed with smoking-related illnesses when they were relatively young—many in their 30s and 40s, and one at only 18.  Their stories send a powerful message: Quit smoking now. Or better yet—don’t start.   To view the ads, please visit the campaign’s website and look under “Real Stories.” 

A couple of months ago we expanded our arsenal of resources to help smokers quit tobacco with the addition of the Call it Quits app which is also on our Facebook page.  The Call It Quits app on Facebook is another free tool brought to you by the ASHLine to help smokers win their battle against tobacco. The Arizona Smokers’ Helpline, has been helping Arizonans quit for more than 15 years-and has a 40% quit rate at six months.

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Free CME program for behavioral health providers on tobacco cessation

October 10th, 2011

Arizona Smokers’ Helpline, the University of Arizona, Mel and Enid Zuckerman, and the College of Public Health will present a free CME conference “Evidence-based Interventions for Tobacco Cessation in Populations with Mental Illness Challenges,” Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. to behavioral health providers. The conference will take place at the Fiesta Resort Conference Center (2100 S. Priest Dr., Tempe, AZ 85282) and teleconference will take place in Tucson at Community Partnership of Southern Arizona (2502 N. Dodge Blvd., Ste. 130, Tucson, AZ 85716).

The purpose of this CME activity is to increase awareness of the effectiveness and benefits of using a quitline for individuals who want to quit tobacco use, and to develop the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to assess and treat tobacco dependence in smokers with co-occurring psychiatric and addictive disorders.

Please register online by Monday, Oct. 10, 2011, by clicking on the following link: REGISTER NOW. For additional information or questions, please contact: Shannon Vaffis, MPH, assistant director, community relations & referral, Arizona Smokers’ Helpline at (520) 320-6818 or vaffis@email.arizona.edu. Click here for conference information, including agenda and learning objectives.

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Behavioral Health Kicking the Habit

September 13th, 2011

For the past 16 months, our folks in the Division of Behavioral health and our Bureau of Tobacco and Chronic Disease and ASHline have been working to train clinical behavioral health staff in Maricopa and Pima Counties on how to get folks into smoking cessation (quit) services.  The overall goal of this collaboration was to establish a systemic change within the behavioral health system for cessation services and to move Arizona toward being tobacco free!   This involves assessing every single patient at every single visit for tobacco use and providing them the opportunity to be referred for tobacco cessation counseling.

The trend is good.  Our latest data suggests that nearly 10% of all referrals came from our Regional Behavioral Health Authorities.  Here’s the kicker- of those referred, nearly 50% are enrolling for ongoing cessation counseling, which exceeds the enrollment rate of the overall population!  This is truly wonderful.  Most recently, Magellan has officially implemented referral linkages to ASHLine in their electronic health record system and will begin to roll out communication/training to the clinics immediately- allowing case managers and medical staff to easily access the referral form for each client they see while going completely electronic.  Our joint success in this venture, which is far ahead of the curve for integrating behavioral health and tobacco control, will continue to capture the attention of our partners on the national level.

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Tobacco Cessation Among Folks with a Mental Illness

February 3rd, 2011

For the past 18 months our tobacco cessation and behavioral health teams have been working together in a way that is positioning Arizona as a national leader in closing the gap in life expectancy for people with a mental illness!

Consider these startling facts which confront Arizonans with a mental illness:

  1. Life expectancy is 30 years less than the population as a whole;
  2. While draining their financial resources, tobacco is the leading cause of death;
  3. An estimated 75% of people with a mental illness use tobacco, which is nearly five times the statewide tobacco prevalence;
  4. Tobacco use among behavioral health providers is estimated at 33% and presents a systemic barrier in reducing chronic disease rates that are double the statewide average; and
  5. Nearly 50% of tobacco products are purchased by people with a mental illness.

When confronted with these facts our teams went to work immediately to:

  1. Examine the traditional barriers to integrating clinical treatment and tobacco cessation;
  2. Present their findings to key stakeholders in both the tobacco control and behavioral health arenas;
  3. Apply for and received cessation grants; and
  4. Execute an effective intervention program which is now showing significant gains in an area that many state and local health departments have avoided for years.

We’ve been cultivating participation and ownership among our behavioral health service providers and Consumer Service Agencies to implement on-site interventions aimed at reducing the unnecessary health and cost burdens placed upon people, their families, and surrounding communities who are affected by mental illness.  These are low tech but labor intensive interventions that emphasize judicious use of nicotine replacement therapies and medications and intake/treatment protocols with seamless links to a clinically trained, state-of-the-art quitline (ASHLine), resulting in an unprecedented volume both referrals and enrollment in tobacco cessation services.

To date, 45% of callers to the ASHLine are enrolling in personal coaching services.  This exceeds the statewide average of 35% and is light years ahead of the rest of the nation.  Last week, SAMHSA recognized Arizona as one of five “Behavioral Health Leadership States” who are paving the way to reduce tobacco use and its tragic effects on the quantity and quality of life for people with a mental illness.

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New Year’s Resolutions & Public Health

December 31st, 2010

Our Tobacco Prevention Program will be hitting targeted audiences (lower income Arizonans) a few days before New Years and during January with smoking cessation messages. There’s no better time to motivate folks to quit smoking than January because that’s the time of year when people generally set health goals for themselves.  The ads (funded by a dedicated and voter protected tobacco tax) are designed to give people tools to increase their chances of success.  There’s no easy way out once you are addicted to nicotine, but there are nicotine replacement therapies like the patch, gum, and lozenge; and there are medications such as Zyban® and Chantix® that can help.  You can read more about cessation strategies and resources on our ASHline.

Thanks to ADHS staff  and all of our partners in the community and other government agencies for their hard work this year.  We have a lot to be proud of… and have a great Holiday…

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2011 Department Priorities Spotlight- Public Health Prevention

December 28th, 2010

The name of the game for Public Health Prevention in 2011 is integration and leverage.  Our Public Health Prevention Team will be focusing on the social determinants of health and working to implement policies, systems and environmental changes that make the healthy choices easy.  Here are some examples of our public health prevention priorities for the coming year:

Worksite Wellness

Perhaps one of the biggest leverage points for improving community health lies with Arizona employers.  Employers are increasingly recognizing that a healthier workforce is a more productive and efficient workforce and by applying simple public health prevention tools that can improve their productivity.  We’ll be using our Worksite Wellness Tool to help Arizona businesses to adopt wellness and health promotion activities for their employees.  The kinds of simple things we’ll be working with them on are smoking cessation, weight management, nutrition, heart disease prevention, diabetes prevention, etc.  Businesses that are self-insured (for health insurance) have double the potential gains because they’ll eventually benefit from worksite wellness with lowered premiums.

State Government Wellness

We’ll also build on our partnership with the ADOA to offer our services in augmenting the State wellness initiative and working with St. Luke’s Health Initiatives and others to make evidence based public health resources available to employers.  Included in this effort will be:

  1. Diabetes Self-Management Training -  Almost 10% of state employees have diabetes, and we’ll be partnering with ADOA to increase use of self-management (the cornerstone of treatment and care) to improve care;
  2. Launching a state-wide ”Hands Only” CPR initiative on three fronts:  Public (bystander) Awareness, Systems-Level Protocol Change (Dispatch – 911), and Worksite (employee) training;
  3. Design and launch a public awareness campaign focusing on early detection and effective disease management for Arizonans with colon, breast and cervical cancers;
  4. Expand our reach and utilization of tobacco cessation efforts via ASHline (phone and web-based services) among the behavioral health population, through partnering with some of our Regional Behavioral Health Authorities to create systems-based referrals in each behavioral health clinical site.

Nutrition & Food Stamps

We’ll also be working with other interested states and public health associations to change what foods qualify for purchase under the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP (formerly called food stamps).   This is an idea that is getting national attention, including a recent article in the American Journal of Public Health that outlined a number of ways to improve diets of SNAP participants along with everyone else. This issue will be considered when Congress votes on the new Farm Bill in 2013. The Healthy Hunger Free Act of 2010 signed by the President this week will strengthen nutrition education provided to SNAP participants by focusing on obesity prevention and allowing public health approaches to be more fully incorporated into SNAP nutrition education activities. Visit www.eatwellbewell.org to see the nutrition education currently available to families receiving SNAP benefits in Arizona (don’t miss the videos and games).

Breastfeeding

We’ll be continuing to press our efforts to make institutional changes in maternity care practices and increase breastfeeding initiation and duration.  Arizona’s “5 Baby Steps to Breastfeeding Success” are the hospital practices that make the biggest difference. Our Breastfeeding Team is working with Arizona Perinatal Trust to train 5,100 nurses in 31 APT-certified hospitals statewide on Arizona’s 5 Baby Steps to Breastfeeding Success. All of these hospitals are committed to changing their policies to support breastfeeding. The technical assistance from ADHS is the key in mentoring the hospitals through model policy training and moving the policy from paper to action.

Health in Schools

We’ll also be using a more coordinated approach as we work with Arizona schools on various health initiatives.  Our new school coordinating committee will continue to share resources, streamline access and improve outreach for all of our programs.  The bottom line is that healthy children learn better and offering daily physical education or daily school breakfast can improve academic performance. We’ll be helping schools to complete the CDCs School Health Index assessment tool that they can use to develop a plan to improve their health-related policies and programs.  Strengthening school wellness policies, supporting farm-to-school programs, and increasing physical activity throughout the school day are all high priorities for the collaborative work.  Check out the Coordinated School Health website at http://www.healthologyaz.com/ to learn more about school health in action.

Of course there will be alot more than just these things going on in public health prevention in 2011, but this gives you a taste of what’s up.

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