In Action Communities

Allegheny County, PA

This is a place-based initiative in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, home to the Pittsburgh Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates.  Our initiative focused on assisting Tobacco Free Allegheny revitalize countywide cessation efforts that were severely curtailed due to drastic cuts in the State tobacco settlement funding. Tobacco Free Allegheny is the organization tasked with coordinating cessation programming within the County.

Our process began with a countywide Tobacco Cessation Summit, held in August 2010. The purpose of the Summit was to bring together partners in cessation and assist the 42 attending organizations to strategize about no cost/low cost programming to promote cessation efforts within their own organization and throughout the county. As part of this effort, CS2Day will work with clinics and will provide cessation CE trainings to interested healthcare professionals of all disciplines in the County throughout 2011, as well as offer assistance to each organization as needed.

Waycross, GA

Smoking rates in southeast Georgia are well above the national average.  This initiative in Waycross involves programs and projects driven by the health department, hospital, medical society, pharmacy society, and school system.  This initiative is designed to impact all smokers, their families, their healthcare providers, and their employers in Waycross, Ware County, and surrounding counties in Southeast Georgia.  Activities planned include physician and pharmacist educational activities, motivational interviewing training, student video and essay contests, special health department and employer initiatives, and others.  This project is expected to reduce smoking and other tobacco utilization in a 7 county area in southeast Georgia.

Indian Health
The Physicians’ Institute is coordinating with University of Arizona Healthcare Partnership to conduct two 2 day Motivational Interviewing training programs targeting women’s health, with a particular focus on pregnancy, in the Indian tribes as affected by tobacco use.  One of these educational activities will be conducted in Arizona and the second will be conducting in a neighboring state.  Materials will be revised for cultural sensitivity to the Indian population.

Integrated Behavioral Health
CS2Day is joining forces with Aetna insurance to explore and test efficacy of utilizing behavioral health specialist in the primary care settings to increase smoking quit rates.

Aetna Behavioral Health, in partnership with behavioral health and primary care communities in SE Pennsylvania, has launched an integrated behavioral health pilot program in seven organized primary care offices. Current sites include one community-based family medicine practice, three  internal medicine practices, an academic family medicine residency training clinic and two community-based pediatric practices.   These sites serve both commercially insured as well as Medicaid and Medicare patient population.

1. Behavioral health providers who are trained in integrated behavioral health in primary care setting model provide assessment, screening, brief intervention, and referral resources to the primary care offices.  Goal of this program is two-fold:
   To screen and provide brief intervention for behavioral health issues and behaviors associated with chronic illnesses such tobacco use, nutrition, exercise, medication adherence, and psychosocial stressors associated with chronic illness. The approach is family-systems based and the focus is not only on the patient but also the patient’s support systems.  Patients who are identified as being in need of more intensive specialty behavioral health services are referred to community based network behavioral health providers.
2. To screen and provide brief interventions for smoking cessation AND mental health.

Using the CS2day and 5A framework, as well as motivational interviewing approach, primary care and behavioral health provider partnerships will be trained to provide screening and brief intervention related to tobacco use.

The Iowa Community will include multiple safety net providers and communities across Iowa. Iowa Foundation for Medical Care (IFMC) will partner with the Iowa Nebraska Primary Care Association and Iowa Public Health Department to build on their smoking cessation interests and activities. Project participants will include eight Iowa safety net providers interested in using electronic health technology within their clinic to support and improve their process for screening and impacting patients for tobacco use. Each clinic will be provided a registry tool (CareMeasures), continuing education, and practice facilitation to better identify and impact their smokers. Data from the registry will be used to track increased tobacco use screening and referrals. The project will also track referrals to Quitline Iowa. Additionally IFMC will work with the Iowa Public Health Department to address statewide gaps in knowledge regarding tobacco use screening and referral by providing three continuing education programs to health care providers.

The Physicians’ Institute is utilizing a Train-the-Trainer approach to promote the methods of Motivational Interviewing on smoking cessation in two organizations. Motivational interviewing is a proven, patient centered counseling method for addressing patient ambivalence and resistance to change. The two organizations selected through a competitive proposal process are Saint Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and Salem VA Medical Center in Salem, Virginia.  Both organizations sent health care providers to an intensive communications training session, providing tools and resources for local trainings at their respective organizations.  The two organizations will spend the next several months focusing on local training and evaluation. 

This community is a placed based initiative in Richmond, VA. In collaboration with the CS2day partners the Bon Secours Health System and their Richmond-based hospitals, and the International Speedway Corporation/Richmond International Raceway worked together to create a unique, non-traditional learning environment.  Working with the CME office at Bon Secours we developed and offered an educational activity entitled “Take 2 Minutes to Quit”.  This activity focused on smoking cessation efforts through the use of Motivational Interviewing techniques and was offered to all interested clinicians with a live learning laboratory at the Richmond International Raceway.  Our live learning laboratory enabled the health care providers that attended the CME activity to practice the brief intervention techniques that they were taught with the race fans attending the race weekend.

Second Life

The Second Life community is a "virtual" community, in world, on Second Life.  Second Life is one of the largest and most used virtual communities, boasting more than 18 million users worldwide.  CAFP, in partnership with Boston University Medical School, and three other CS2Day Collaborative members, is creating and delivering innovative, immersive learning experiences for both 5As for Cessation and Motivational Interviewing curriculum for primary care clinicians.  Three separate activities will be presented in February and March 2011.  A Robust Learning Resource Center, available 27/7, with links to the ceasesmoking2day site, will also be available to any Second Life users.  The partners will also engage in an in-dept research project, led by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, to track and assess the benefits and challenges of providing clinical education in this unique, cutting edge environment.

Smoke Free Families

Smoking before and during pregnancy is the chief preventable cause of illness and death among mothers and infants.  Promoting Smoke Free Families seeks to support health care providers efforts to improve smoking cessation rates and decrease exposure to second and third hand smoke among pregnant women by providing evidence-based resources and educational materials in a variety of easy to access formats.

State of Indiana

In December 2009, CS2day partner Purdue University School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, along with Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation and Partnership for Prevention, convened the Indiana Summit on Smoking Cessation. This summit created consensus among attendees concerning the goal of reducing the smoking rate within the state to 18% by 2015. To meet this objective, participants identified six broad-based strategies, one of which is healthcare professional education.

Capitalizing on the groundwork laid through the summit, CS2day will make a measurable impact on healthcare professional education by sharing our tools, continuing education activities, and resources. Our overarching strategy is to employ these educational resources to mold a curriculum for each partner organization that is based on the needs of the healthcare professionals they reach.