Press Release - Beyond the 5 A’s: Improving Cessation Interventions through Strengthened Training
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Posted by: Natalia Gromov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Adam Dormuth
December 4, 2013 303-398-1082
dormutha@njhealth.org
National Jewish Health
Collaborates with the North American Quitline Consortium
and the Smoking
Cessation Leadership Center to
Improve Smoking
Cessation Efforts by Health Professionals
Beyond the 5 A’s:
Improving Cessation Interventions through Strengthened Training
National Jewish Health and the North American Quitline Consortium,
in collaboration with the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center, brought health
care professionals together to improve the frequency and effectiveness of
smoking cessation interventions at Beyond
the 5 A’s: Improving Cessation Interventions through Strengthened Training conference
in Scottsdale, Arizona, from November 13 – 15, 2013. The conference,
supported by an unrestricted educational grant from Pfizer, Inc., brought
together 167 professionals currently designing and delivering smoking cessation
provider education, public health experts, health care providers, and
researchers to translate recent advances in knowledge about smoking-cessation
into concrete actions.
"Pfizer’s Independent Grants for Learning & Change Department
has provided us with an exciting and important opportunity to advance smoking
cessation efforts and education,” said David Tinkelman, MD, medical director of
Health Initiatives at National Jewish Health. "Our partnerships with the North
American Quitline Consortium and the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center, two
of the nation’s leaders in tobacco-related cessation efforts, were instrumental
in bringing together the professionals who have the ability to impact and
change behavior to improve smoking cessation rates nationally.”
The goal is to improve future outcomes by beginning to think about
smoking cessation interventions beyond the current best practice guidelines of
the 5 A’s, ask, advise, assess, assist and arrange.
Attendees of
Beyond the 5 A’s: Improving Cessation Interventions through Strengthened
Training examined recent advances in the science and practice of
tobacco cessation. They discussed and shared their own best practices and
challenges to improving the effectiveness and quality of smoking cessation
interventions delivered within health care settings. The conference was a
continuing medical education and continuing education-certified activity, and
included certification for physicians, nurses, and certified health
specialists.
The conference included a variety of learning formats, including
didactic lectures, break-out group sessions, hosted networking roundtable
discussions, poster sessions, and an innovative "World Café Method of
Facilitation,” where attendees gathered, shared, and learned from each other’s
experiences. Topics focused on innovative strategies to engage health care
professionals in cessation efforts and how to promote advising their patients
to quit, exploring the diverse needs of specific populations of tobacco users,
and systems change and partnerships to strengthen cessation within specific
health care settings. Plenary sessions included topics related to the
future of quitlines, The Joint Commission’s Tobacco Cessation Performance
Measure-Set, tobacco user demographics, and changing provider behavior to
increase cessation advice.
Presenters included Tim McAfee, MD, MPH, Director of the Center
for Disease Control’s Office on Smoking and Health within the National Center
for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Donald Weaver, MD, Chief
Medical Officer for the National Association of Community Health Centers, and
Ann E. Watt, Associate Director in the Division of Health Care Quality
Evaluation at the Joint Commission.
"It was wonderful to see so many dedicated professionals from
different backgrounds, clinical settings, and geographic locations come
together to share ideas and strategies about how to help smokers quit,” noted
Dr. Steven Schroeder, director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at
UCSF. "These were true public health heroes and heroines.”
The collaborating organizations have developed a website to
provide conference highlights to those who were not able to attend, as well as
to continue the important conversation between health professionals providing
cessation efforts in an innovative online discussion forum. In addition,
visitors can access continuing education on this topic area on the site, http://www.beyondthe5as.org/index.php.
National Jewish Health is a leader in research related to the
effects of tobacco and tobacco cessation as well as the nation’s second largest
provider of quitline services, and a nonprofit multidisciplinary accredited
provider of medical education.
National Jewish Health
is the leading respiratory hospital in the nation. Founded 115 years ago as a
nonprofit hospital, National Jewish Health today is the only facility in the
world dedicated exclusively to groundbreaking medical research and treatment of
patients with respiratory, cardiac, immune and related disorders. Patients and
families come to National Jewish Health from around the world to receive
cutting-edge, comprehensive and coordinated care. To learn more, visit www.njhealth.org.
The North American Quitline
Consortium is a non-profit professional organization that aims
to maximize the access, use and effectiveness of quitlines; provide leadership
and a unified voice to promote quitlines; and offer a forum to link those
interested in quitline operations. It is comprised of over 400 quitline
professionals at state and provincial health departments, quitline service
provider organizations, research institutes and national organizations in the
United States and Canada. The Consortium enables professionals from these
organizations to learn from each other and to improve the quality of quitline
services.
The Smoking Cessation
Leadership Center is a national program office of the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation which aims to increase smoking cessation rates and
increase the number of health professionals who help smokers quit. The Center
receives significant support from the Legacy foundation to focus on reducing
tobacco dependence in the behavioral health field.
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