Primary care clinicians counsel patients to quit smoking more often when they are prompted by an electronic health record, according to a new study supported by AHRQ and NIH's National Cancer Institute. Clinicians participating in the study were part of the Partners Primary Care Practice-Based Research Network, a group of 26 primary care practices that currently use a Web-based electronic health record and are affiliated with Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Clinicians in an intervention group received tobacco treatment-related reminders and icons; more than 40 percent of them used a new "Tobacco Smart Form," an addition to the electronic health record that prompted them to provide a range of smoking cessation interventions. Among patients who were smokers at the start of the study, more than twice as many (5.3 percent), who went to practices with the prompts or the form quit smoking by the end of the study, largely due to followup with a tobacco counselor (3.9 percent). Select to access the free full article the April 27 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

San Francisco, CA - March 19, 2009 - A new curriculum is now available online at no cost to help mental health peer counselors aid people with mental illnesses in quitting smoking, according to Steven Schroeder, M.D., director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

Dr. Schroeder stated that the curriculum was developed because of the alarmingly high smoking rates of people with behavioral health issues. He said that despite impressive declines in the proportion of the general population that smokes (now at around 1 in 5 adults), persons with mental illness continue to smoke at disproportionate rates. It has been estimated that 44.3% of all cigarettes smoked in the United States are smoked by persons with mental illness.

With input from consumers, mental health professionals, advocates, and national leaders, the 3-hour Tobacco-Free for Recovery: Assisting Mental Health Consumers with Tobacco Cessation curriculum was designed by UCSF staff and Rx for Change faculty. This program was developed to equip peer counselors with the necessary knowledge and skills to assist mental health consumers with tobacco cessation. A smoke-free lifestyle is viewed as a vital element on the path toward wellness and recovery.

The new curriculum is a modified version of Rx for Change: Clinician-Assisted Tobacco Cessation, which draws upon the Clinical Practice Guideline for Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence, and is a comprehensive program for training students and clinicians in virtually any health professional field. Those who are interested can visit the Rx for Change website at http://rxforchange.ucsf.edu to register and download PowerPoint slides, audience handouts, and correspondence video segments that are relevant to the mental health peer counselor curriculum. All materials have been reviewed by experts and are provided at no cost, for shared use.

Dr. Schroeder, who is also UCSF distinguished professor of health and health care, noted that in response to the public health problem of high levels of tobacco use among mental health consumers, leaders of the mental health community convened and established the National Mental Health Partnership for Wellness and Smoking Cessation in March 2007. This partnership leveraged, among numerous issues, the value of consumer-centered education and health promotion. The new curriculum grew, in part, out of the work of the national partnership.

 

According to Dr. Schroeder, "This new curriculum is a unique resource to address an important need by helping to educate peer counselors, who can play a very key role in helping mental health consumers to quit smoking."

 

A three-hour webinar training is planned for April 13, 2009 at 9a.m. Pacific Time (noon Eastern Time). If you are interested in participating in this free webinar or know someone who is, please contact Reason Reyes by email at Reason.Reyes@ucsf.edu or by phone at toll-free (877) 509-3786. A follow-up email will be sent to you to confirm the logistics for the training.

For more information: http://smokingcessationleadership.ucsf.edu and http://rxforchange.ucsf.edu

 

 

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/36966849.html

 

May 13, 2008 The New York Times No one really knows how the African-American preference for menthol cigarettes developed in the first place. Some scientists speculate that cultural and taste preferences provide a partial explanation. The Rev. Jesse Brown, an antismoking advocate in Philadelphia, calls it a “chicken and egg” conundrum. But tobacco industry marketing has played a role. The migration of African-Americans to urban manufacturing centers after World War II, coupled with the emergence of black-oriented newspapers and magazines, created various opportunities for niche marketing. In the case of cigarettes, with research showing a slight black preference for Kools, a menthol brand, the industry saw an opening to appeal to black smokers. Or at least that is the explanation central to a paper on the history of menthol marketing by Phillip S. Gardiner, the research administrator of a tobacco disease program at the University of California, Oakland. The paper notes that Elston Howard, who became the first black player for the New York Yankees in 1955, was hired as a Kool spokesman. By 1978 Lorillard, Newport’s maker, had borrowed the singer James Brown’s hit single, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” for its marketing message, “Newport is a whole new bag of menthol smoking.” Dr. Gardiner’s paper, published in 2004 in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, also notes that by the 1980s, Brown & Williamson, the maker of Kool, had started its Kool Jazz Festival to appeal to the same market. More recently, hip-hop artists have helped promote Kool, now the third-biggest menthol brand, which was acquired in 2004 by R. J. Reynolds. Dr. Brian A. Primack, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the author of a study published last year on the concentration of tobacco signs and billboards in African-American neighborhoods, said observational evidence suggested that about three-fourths of outdoor cigarette advertising in African-American neighborhoods was for menthol brands. Magazine advertising for cigarettes has declined since the 1998 tobacco industry settlement with state attorneys general. But the portion devoted to menthol brands — only 12 percent in 1998 — had grown to 76 percent by 2006, according to an recent analysis by the Tobacco Control Research Program at Harvard. Lorillard’s Newport, the country’s second-biggest selling cigarette and the leading menthol brand, is the best seller among African-Americans. “It’s very much marketed with youth orientation, and the primary distribution is in delis and bodegas,” said K. Michael Cummings, the chairman of the department of health behavior at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo. The tobacco companies do not agree that black smokers are a special target for menthol marketing. A Lorillard spokesman, Michael W. Robinson, said that Lorillard, a subsidiary of Loews Corporation, marketed its product across a wide array of ethnicities to adult smokers. “Lorillard wants the widest customer base possible among adults,” Mr. Robinson said. He said that only 15 percent of the company’s advertising budget is directed at the African-American market segment. David P. Howard, a spokesman for R. J. Reynolds, a unit of Reynolds American, which markets menthol brands including Kool and Salem, said his company also advertised to a wide range of audiences, because with so many more white smokers than black, only 18 percent of R. J. Reynolds’ menthol sales are to African-Americans. But he acknowledged that the company does try to appeal to black smokers: “Would we like African-Americans to choose R. J. Reynolds brands? Yes, we would. Do we have marketing and communications that that audience can identify with? Yes, we do.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Health is pleased to announce the Pennsylvania Cancer Education Network (Network) as a new cancer control initiative in the commonwealth that aims to help reduce the number of cancer cases and deaths in Pennsylvania

Strategic Alliance for Health Communities focuses on the chronic disease risk factors of physical inactivity, poor nutrition, and tobacco use, and population-based responses such as policy, systems, and environmental changes. Closing date for applications is June 24, 2008.

For more information:

http://www.grants.gov/search/search.do;jsessionid=LRJJ9MT8TQhhCYZTRLjLyN6pyLsPpkzB12sMRLyTXkwnpwndn2nM!1480235049?oppId=17562&flag2006=true&mode=VIEW

Feb 8, 2008

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week called on states to dramatically increase their Medicaid tobacco dependency treatment coverage. The CDC report cited the Healthy People 2010 goal of instituting total health insurance coverage for evidence-based tobacco cessation treatments in all 51 state Medicaid programs, AHA News Now reports. In this week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the CDC outlines results from a 2006 nationwide survey, which indicates that 39 state Medicaid programs offer some form of tobacco-dependence treatment coverage for beneficiaries, one-third of whom smoke. While all programs cover some form of pharmacotherapy and 17 states cover some form of cessation counseling services, many Medicaid programs have limitations on coverage for treatment. Barriers include co-payments, requirements for prior authorization, caps on treatment duration, requirements that patients try one form of therapy before beginning another and provisions for covering a single treatment type at a time. Reinforcing results of a May 2007 Institute of Medicine report that recommended all health plans offer lifetime tobacco cessation benefits, the CDC advocates full Medicaid coverage for recommended tobacco-dependence treatments to reduce tobacco use (AHA News Now, 2/7/08; CDC report, 2/8/08).

North Carolina Group Receives Grant to Improve Diabetes Care for Minorities

Jan 29, 2008

The North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund, one of three entities created by the General Assembly to invest the state's portion of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, has awarded $326,699 to Robeson Health Care Corp. for efforts to eliminate health disparities among diabetic minorities living in Robeson County, the Fayetteville Observer reports. Using the award, Robeson Health Care will partner with the Diabetes Community Center at Southeastern Regional Medical Center to improve the coordination of preventive and chronic care services for Native American, African-American and Hispanic diabetes patients. In addition, the organizations will work to improve education and nutrition counseling for those patient populations (Fayetteville Observer, 1/28/08; North Carolina Health and Wellness Trust Fund Web site).  

http://www.rwjf.org/programareas/features/digest.jsp?c=EMC-ND141&pid=1141&id=7138

 

Diabetes-Related Health Costs Soared to $174 Billion in 2007

Jan 28, 2008

A report released last week by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) finds that diabetes cost the United States $174 billion in 2007 in direct medical care and lost productivity, marking a 32 percent increase over 2002 costs, USA Today reports. According to the report, approximately 1 million people are diagnosed with diabetes each year, with much of the disease's associated expense stemming from the treatment of patients with unmanaged diabetes. Regular physician visits, medications and other forms of routine care, meanwhile, were found to have a comparatively smaller effect on overall diabetes costs. In addition, the researchers found that approximately half of all diabetes costs related to inpatient care. The disease also was associated with a 50 percent increase in the length of hospital stays for other conditions. To put diabetes' $174 billion toll in perspective, USA Today notes that the disease costs almost as much as cancer, which cost the nation just over $206 billion in 2006 but kills twice as many people, according to the American Cancer Society. In other terms, diabetes spending in the United States is nearly on par with the amount spent on the military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global war on terrorism combined (Szabo, USA Today, 1/24/08; ADA report, 1/23/08).

 http://www.rwjf.org/programareas/features/digest.jsp?c=EMC-ND141&pid=1141&id=7133