Health Care Professionals: Help Your Patients Quit Smoking

You can play a key role in fighting tobacco use, the number one cause of preventable death and disease in the United States. No matter what your specialty is, you know the drastic effects that smoking can have on your patients’ health. You know the toll secondhand smoke can take on their children and families. Many smokers want to quit. Getting started often takes support and motivation from trusted sources, like you.

When it comes to talking to patients about quitting tobacco use, the Tips From Former Smokers^® (Tips^®) campaign can be a conversation starter. The campaign offers resources for you as well as your patients. With the support of CDC’s materials, you can help more patients live smokefree lives.

I’m Ready to Help My Smoking Patients Quit. How Can I Get Started?

Congratulations on your dedication! Following are some resources to help you with this very important work:

• Fact sheet about Tips [PDF – 1M] and how health care professionals can get involved and support patients
• Handout for Your Patients — “Reasons to Quit Smoking” [PDF – 1M]
• Free continuing education training for up to 4.5 CEs, entitled “Smoking Cessation for Pregnancy and Beyond: A Virtual Clinic”
• FAQs for Health Care Providers
• FAQs about how quitlines work and their effectiveness
• A printable, pocket-sized tobacco intervention card [PDF – 69K] that lists the steps for conducting a brief tobacco intervention with your patients
• Medscape video (Conducting a Brief 2A & R Tobacco Intervention) An informational video featuring Tim McAfee, MD, senior medical officer to CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. This video shares the steps that you can take to conduct brief interventions with your patients.
• Medscape video – HIV and Smoking John Brooks, MD, Leader of the HIV Epidemiology Research Team at the CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention explains the added dangers of smoking with HIV, and what steps you can take to help your patients.
• HIV Provider Smoking Cessation Handbook: A Resource for Providers
• HIV & Tobacco Use: Pharmacologic and Behavioral Methods to Help Your Patients Quit [PDF – 282KB]
• Tips From Former Smokers Download Center for videos to show in your waiting room, radio ads, print ads, and more free resources

How Can I Help My Patients Become Smokefree?

• Download “Talk With Your Health Care Team” posters to inspire your patients to quit (in English or Spanish). Hang them in your practice’s waiting room, in patient rooms, and throughout your offices, where patients will see them every day.
• Download videos, print ads, radio ads, and other Tips campaign materials from the Tips Download Center to show in your waiting room. All of these resources are free for you to use.
• Order free notepads (with the 1-800-QUIT-NOW quitline number and CDC logo) to use in your practice (enter “notepad” in search bar on publication catalog web page).
• Suggest that your patients visit the I’m Ready to Quit! page on the Tips Web site. Link to it from your practice’s Web site.
• Let your patients know that they can get free quit help by calling 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669) or 1-855-DÉJELO-YA (1-855-335-3569) (for Spanish speakers).

Other Resources

Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence: A Quick Reference Guide for Clinicians This quick reference guide summarizes the findings from the Clinical Practice Guideline Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence: 2008 Update, including:

• A summary of evidence-based cessation treatments
• A description of the development process
• Thorough analysis and discussion of the available research
• Critical evaluation of the assumptions and knowledge of the field
• Information for health care decision making

The Community Guide
The Guide to Community Preventive Services is a free resource to help you choose programs and policies to improve health and prevent disease in your community. It includes systematic reviews of tobacco prevention and control interventions in the following areas:

• Youth prevention
• Cessation
• Exposure to secondhand smoke
• Minors’ access to tobacco products
• Tobacco use among workers
• Mass-reach health campaigns

Our Partners

The following organizations have partnered with The Tips From Former Smokers Campaign to build awareness for tobacco prevention and cessation.

 

American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP)

Learn more about AAFP’s Tobacco and Nicotine Program, which provides valuable resources on tobacco and nicotine prevention and control. The AAFP’s Tobacco and Nicotine Toolkit offers resources to support tobacco and nicotine prevention and cessation.

 

American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP)

Learn more about AANP’s continuing education resource — Smoking Cessation: Snuff a Butt, Save a Life — at cecenter.aanp.org.

 

American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

Learn more about AAP’s Clinicians & Clinical Practice resources, including practice tools, coding and payment recommendations, training and CME courses, and other resources to help patients and their families.

 

American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM)

Learn more about ACNM and their commitment to Smoking Cessation. ACNM is the professional association that represents certified nurse-midwives (CNMs) and certified midwives (CMs) in the United States.

 

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)

Learn more about ACOG’s Smoking Cessation During Pregnancy[PDF – 4.6MB], a guide and toolkit for clinicians to help pregnant women quit smoking. ACOG’s Smoking Cessation for Pregnancy and Beyond: A Virtual Clinic is a CME-accredited online training which provides education about smoking cessation during pregnancy and beyond.

 

American College of Physicians (ACP)

Learn more about ACP’s Smoking Cessation Resources. This resource section includes policy papers, video highlights of the Annals of Internal Medicine studies on smoking cessation, and instructional briefs about tobacco cessation and tobacco-related disease.

 

American Gastroenterological Association  (AGA)

Learn more about the AGA’s brochures, Colorectal Cancer Prevention and Treatment, and Preparing for a Colonoscopy, and a video to help patients better understand their condition and start doctor-patient conversations.

 

American Medical Association (AMA)

Learn more about AMA and help your patients make healthier choices after they leave your office by promoting healthier lifestyles. AMA’s Promoting Healthy Lifestyles initiative offers resources to help physicians act as community leaders.

 

The Foundation for Health Smart Consumers

Learn about the Foundation for Health Smart Consumers and how it has expanded its Inspire Smoking Cessation program to include access to the Tips From Former Smokers campaign resources.

 

Prevent Blindness

Learn about Prevent Blindness, the nation’s leading volunteer eye health and safety organization, dedicated to fighting blindness and saving sight. For more information on smoking and eye health, visit preventblindness.org/smoking.