Steven A. Schroeder, MD, Smoking Cessation Leadership Center, University of California, San Francisco, 3333 California St., Ste. 430, San Francisco, CA 94143, 415 502-1881, schroeder@medicine.ucsf.edu

No single intervention can save more lives than helping smokers quit, yet health professionals do a dismal job assisting their smoking patients with cessation. Literature shows that advice from a health professional is a powerful and effective motivator for smokers, especially the 70 percent who want to quit, and smokers want their clinicians to advise them about tobacco and its adverse effects on health. Many clinicians believe helping smokers quit is very complicated, but a relatively simple means exists of helping these patients: telephone quitlines, found in most states along with several national numbers, have been shown to double or more the chances of quitting successfully. Interestingly, however, very few clinicians even know quitlines exist. Much more needs to be done to raise awareness of these and other cessation tools among clinicians, and to encourage them to do a better job of helping smoking patients quit.

This panel will discuss quitlines as well as work sponsored by the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center, a national program office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Members include Shu-Hong Zhu, Tammi Byrd, Barry Bleidt and Jerod Loeb. The work involves dental hygienists, pharmacists, and the hospital accrediting process, and is promoting cessation.

Learning Objectives:

• By the conclusion of this symposium, participants will be able to describe current efforts under way to encourage health professionals to do a better job of helping smokers quit. They will know about the existence of a web of telephone quitlines with proven efficacy, and they will be able to explain how clinicians can use quitlines to faciliate the cessation assistance process.

Keywords: Smoking Cessation, Tobacco Control

Related Web page: smokingcessationleadership.ucsf.edu

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Smoking Cessation Leadership Center
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: Director of Smoking Cessation Leadership Center, whose work is described during the Symposium