National Working Group for ACTTION

July 28, 2010
Study Aims to Determine Best Practices for Web-based Cessation

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is launching a new online study to help people quit smoking. The study, called WebQuit, is enrolling adult smokers nationwide. Participation is free to eligible individuals.

July 28, 2010
Cessation Leader Chosen as New Head of Office on Smoking and Health

Dr. Tim McAfee has been chosen to be Director, Office of Smoking and Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  He has been chief medical officer and founder of Free & Clear, Inc., an organization that has grown since 2003 from a small telephone counseling service for smokers into an award-winning, nationally-recognized business with a diverse customer base including nearly 400 commercial and 26 state quitline clients.  He was a practicing family physician for over a decade and continues to treat tobacco-dependent patients.

July 28, 2010
State and City News

-University of Arizona Providing Cessation Training for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Professionals
-South Dakota Smoking Down to 17.5 Percent
-Los Angeles County Report Shows Smoking Rates by Local Community
-St. Louis County Using $7.6 Million for Tobacco Control Projects
-La Porte, Indiana Offers Tobacco Quitline for Workers

July 28, 2010
“Celebrating Smokefree Voices” YouTube Contest Winner

The Smokefree Women web site www.smokefreewomen.gov has just celebrated its 1-year anniversary with a video contest on YouTube.  People were asked to submit videos explaining why women should stay smokefree or why they want the women they love to be or stay smokefree.  More than 14,000 people voted for their favorite of the many videos that were submitted.

July 28, 2010
Partnership Works with Joint Commission to Test Cessation Advice for Hospital Patients

A hospital stay provides a teachable moment, a time when a person should be particularly responsive to learning or being made aware of certain topics.  The Joint Commission, with funding from the Partnership for Prevention, is in the process of developing and testing a set of tobacco cessation quality standards which would take advantage of the teachable moment for hospitalized patients who smoke.

July 28, 2010
ActionToQuit Grantees Moving Forward: Virginia

The summit will begin with a few presentations, including one on how health care reform affects cessation, the status of cessation in Virginia, and a consumer discussing the personal effect of lack of access to cessation services. After these presentations, the bulk of the day will be spent in breakout sessions discussing plan elements.  The initial breakouts will be set up by sector, such as health providers, behavioral health, insurers, and employers.  Later in the day, the sectors will merge to discuss ways that they relate to each other.   At the end of the day, all participants will reconvene to report on their discussions.

July 27, 2010
A Contrary View of U.S. Priorities on Cessation: An Interview with Simon Chapman

Simon Chapman is a Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney. He was deputy editor, then editor of Tobacco Control for 17 years.  For more than 25 years, he has written on the need to invest more resources in campaigns that motivate cessation in smokers and less on pharmacotherapy.  He emphasizes that the large majority of smokers who permanently stop smoking do so unaided.  The results from clinical trials on selected participants with special conditions may differ from results in real world situations, and most importantly, may have different results for long term abstinence. “ActionToQuit” asked Professor Chapman to answer questions about his views on unassisted cessation for this newsletter.

July 28, 2010
Views on Unassisted Cessation: An Interview with Steve Schroeder

Simon Chapman has written about the neglect of “unassisted cessation.”  In a recent article, he said he meant by unassisted cessation “approaches that involve none of these interventions [pharmacotherapy or any individual or group behavioural or cognitive intervention] but instead include interventions such as changes in tobacco tax, smoking restrictions, or public awareness campaigns designed to stimulate cessation.”  ActionToQuit asked Dr. Steve Schroeder of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center for his views on this issue.

July 1, 2010
An EX Update—for Anglers

Legacy’s EX campaign, a free internet resource using evidence-based information to guide smokers to useful resources that help with successful quit attempts, was described in the February 2010 newsletter.  EX touches all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. There is a feature on ESPN about two experienced fishermen who have qualified for the Bassmaster Classic over 25 times and were smokers.  They are struggling, on camera, to re-learn life - and fishing - without cigarettes with the help of EX.

July 1, 2010
Statistical Snapshots

• In Selected Diagnoses, Most Hospital Patients Receive Cessation Advice
• Higher Participation Needed in Employer-Sponsored Smoking Cessation Programs