Academy Rolls Out New Tobacco Cessation Resources
Tools Offer Guidance on E-Cigarettes, Vaping, Screening
June 16, 2021, 3:10 p.m. Michael Devitt — For more than a decade, the Academy’s Ask and Act tobacco cessation program has helped family physicians encourage their patients to quit using tobacco and nicotine via a two-pronged approach: first, by asking patients about tobacco use, then by acting to help them quit.
Thanks to a grant from the CVS Health Foundation, the Academy has developed several free tobacco cessation resources for members, including a number of tools that focus on e-cigarettes. These resources are available on the AAFP’s newly renovated Ask and Act webpage to download and use at the point of care.
Tobacco Cessation Tools: Overview
A total of seven new resources can be accessed.
- Leading Change: Integrating E-cigarette Cessation Into Your Practice helps FPs plan for incorporating e-cigarette cessation into their practice’s overall tobacco cessation efforts.
- Tobacco, E-Cigarettes and Vaping Cessation Education: Presentation for Health Care Workers can be used to educate staff, administrators and others on how to implement tobacco, e-cigarette and vaping cessation in a medical practice.
- Tobacco and E-Cigarette Cessation: Resources for Screening and Electronic Health Records assists practices in ensuring that patient tobacco and e-cigarette use is appropriately documented in the practice’s EHR.
- Tobacco Cessation Flowchart gives members a quick overview of tobacco cessation using the 5As method.
- How to Develop a Quit Plan ― Tobacco/Vape Cessation is a two-page guidance document that assists FPs in creating a quit plan with their patients.
- Guidance for Clinicians’ Discussions of E-cigarettes with Patients offers FPs recommendations for discussing e-cigarette use with patients, as well as points that should be covered.
- FDA-Approved Smoking Cessation Medications provides dosing instructions, administration methods and other relevant information for several front-line medications used for tobacco cessation.
“These resources were developed based on an in-depth evaluation of our Reimagining Ask and Act Office Champions Project,” said Kevin Kovach, Dr.P.H., M.Sc., senior manager of population and community health in the Academy’s Health of the Public and Science Division. “They are based on the experiences of almost 20 family medicine practices working to improve how they addressed tobacco and vaping with their patients over a year-and-a-half timeframe.”
“Each of the tools addresses the barriers these practices experienced or captures the successes they had,” Kovach continued. “We hope that other family physicians can learn from their experiences and use these tools to help their patients avoid or quit smoking or vaping.”
The Reimagining Ask and Act project commenced on July 1, 2019, and was sponsored by the AAFP with support from CVS Health. Initially expected to be complete in June 2020, the project’s timeline was extended because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additional Resources Available
The new resources support and complement many of the Academy’s existing tobacco cessation tools, which can also be accessed from the Ask and Act webpage. These include the Tobacco Cessation Telehealth Guide, which was published in November 2020 to help FPs provide tobacco cessation services remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Treating Tobacco Dependence Practice Manual, which guides FPs in developing a systems-change approach to offering tobacco cessation in practice.
Additional information on tobacco cessation is available on Familydoctor.org, the Academy’s patient-focused website.