The Smoking Cessation Leadership Center is pleased to co-host its next free webinar with the Association for the Treatment of Tobacco Use and Dependence (ATTUD).  Save the date for the webinar, “Behavioral Health & Tobacco:  The Final Frontier,” on September 29, 2011, at 1 pm central time (90 minutes).

Tobacco is a primary cause of death among people with addictions and/or mental health disorders and negatively impacts recovery from other substances. The Association for the Treatment of Tobacco Use and Dependence (ATTUD) developed a policy statement on integrating tobacco treatment into behavioral health services.  ATTUD is an organization of providers dedicated to promoting and increasing access to evidence-based tobacco treatment.

Webinar Objectives

• Describe the effects of tobacco among people with addictions and/or mental health disorders
  
• Understand key findings from the ATTUD position paper 
  
• Learn about relationships among tobacco dependence, withdrawal, outcome and response to treatment
  
• Learn specific action steps you can take to integrate tobacco treatment into behavioral health services  

Register now using and save the date.

Accreditation:
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians and allied health professionals.

UCSF designates this live activity for a maximum of 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 CreditsTM.  Participants who join the session on September 29, 2011, are eligible to earn up to 1.5 CME/CEU credits for a fee of $25 per CME/CEU certificate.  Physicians and allied health professionals should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the webinar activity.  

Certificate of completion will be available at no cost.  Please feel free to forward this announcement to your colleagues.  This webinar will be recorded and can be viewed online on the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center’s website beginning September 30, 2011.  For answers to other questions, contact Reason Reyes, SCLC director of technical assistance, at reason.reyes@ucsf.edu, or call toll-free (877) 509-3786.

A U.S. healthcare accreditor has announced plans to require hospitals to screen and treat for patients for tobacco use.

The tobacco screening and treatment plans were announced today by the Partnership for Prevention, and released by the Joint Commission, an independent, not-for-profit organization that accredits and certifies more than 19,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States. 

The new certification measures will require participating hospitals to screen all inpatients for tobacco, provide counseling and pharmacologic treatment to tobacco users, and provide limited follow-up after discharge.

Partnership for Prevention provided the original funding for development and pilot testing of the measure set. Partnership’s ActionToQuit initiative advocates that all hospitals and health systems in the nation contribute to the public’s health by making tobacco cessation a priority. 

Tobacco screening and treatment for all patients is currently the practice in some hospitals. It is not a routine procedure, however, in spite of wide agreement that treatment to help patients quit is both effective and cost-effective. Hospitalization provides an ideal opportunity to help tobacco users quit. 

The Partnership for Prevention reports that although this is a significant step forward for promoting efforts to help people quit tobacco use in the United States, there is much more work to be done before all hospitals, health centers, and addiction treatment facilities establish this as a standard practice.  

To view the measure set, visit the Joint Commission website and look for Specifications Manual version 4.0:

The four tobacco measures have been extracted and can be found here:

TOB-1
TOB-2
TOB-3
TOB-4 

Joint Commission accreditation and certification is recognized nationwide as a symbol of quality that reflects an organization’s commitment to meeting certain performance standards. 

This app is being made available for free for 7 days starting on May 31st in honor of World No Tobacco Day. Its usual price is $4.99, in order to raise funds for the research program at UCSF/SFGH.

The San Francisco Stop Smoking application works in Spanish or English. It helps smokers discover connections between smoking, mood, and day-to-day life to help smokers quit and stay quit. 

How old are the people who die from smoking?

In this video by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the story of one man brings home how young a woman can be when her life is taken by smoking.

Rick Stoddard explains how his wife, Marie, died at age 46 from lung cancer caused by smoking cigarettes. 

Stoddard's mission is to tell as many youth and adults as possible across America about the dangers of tobacco use.

The video also reminds us that it's not only those whose lives are taken by smoking who lose out: Stoddard's wife died, and he lives to grieve her loss.

Each year, 2,200 Nebraskans die from their own smoking, leaving behind loved ones and friends. Stoddard's message is a compelling reminder of why the Nebraska effort to promote tobacco free kids and support efforts to help Nebraskans quit smoking and quit tobacco use is so critical.

Nebraskans who have lost a loved one to tobacco use or who suffer because of smoking or tobacco use can share their story, become a member of Nebraskans ACT, and help promote tobacco free kids and help Nebraskans in their efforts to quit smoking and quit tobacco use.