The PHS Clinical Practice Guideline recommends telephone quitline
counseling as effective with diverse populations and has broad reach.
Clinicians and health care delivery systems should both ensure patient
access to quitlines and promote quitline use. The Guideline found
that quitline counseling combined with medication can more than
triple a smoker's chances of quitting. Every state now has a tobacco
cessation quitline, but programs are severely under-funded.
Featured Partner Activity
NTCC partner North American Quitline Consortium
(NAQC) seeks to unite health departments, quitline service providers,
researchers and national organizations in the United States and
Canada to enable quitline professionals to learn from each other
and to improve quitline services. Through NAQC, quitline professionals
work together to increase access to and the effectiveness of quitline
services that help people in their quitting attempts. NAQC's mission
is 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.
The Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health
in 2004 estimated that quitlines could reach up to 16% of all
smokers each year, with full funding and a national promotion
campaign. CDC's Best Practices Update 2007 set 8% reach as a goal
for quitlines. However, NAQC's Annual Survey estimates that quitlines
currently reach 1% smokers nationally (2005). To attain 8% reach,
U.S. quitline funding should total approximately $498 million.
Actual quitline expenditures were $43.5 million in 2006.
Since 2005, quitlines have existed in all 50
states, DC, Puerto Rico and Guam. But the capacity varies greatly
from quitline to quitline based on funding level, services provided,
hours of operation, and populations served. Current challenges
to increasing capacity for quitlines include:
- Increasing overall funding and diversifying funding sources
(e.g. reimbursement, third party support, tax earmarks) for
services, promotion and other related activities
- Developing a national promotion strategy for 1-800-QUIT-NOW
To support quitline providers, NAQC develops many resources,
including case studies, fact sheets, and issue papers. The case
studies focus on describing quitlines' experiences providing cessation
services during the implementation of new statewide smoke-free
policies. NAQC also released a promotions coordination plan, "Partnering
to Promote Quitlines: A Plan to Coordinate the Effective Use of
1-800-QUIT-NOW in National Media and Considerations for Other
Promotional Strategies." As part of its Quality Improvement Initiative,
NAQC has recently released:
- Standard for Measuring Reach of Quitline Programs
- Standard for Measuring Quit Rates
- Technical materials on how to improve quit rate and reach
(upcoming)
- Benchmarking (seeking funding)
All materials can be accessed on the NAQC website at http://www.naquitline.org/welcome.
Other Partner Activities
NTCC partners are currently conducting many
activities related to this priority. For a list of these NTCC
partner activities, click here.
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