Tobacco Training and Cessation Program

The Florida AHEC Network has been charged with providing tobacco training and cessation programs to current and future healthcare professionals. As a result, FSU College of Medicine AHEC Program Offices will be working with our faculty and medical students to reduce the negative health consequences of smoking.

• Faculty Cessation Training
  The Clinical Practice Guidelines for Tobacco Use and Dependence state that advice from a healthcare professional can more than double smoking cessation success rates. We have begun training our clinical faculty throughout the state on the clinical practice guidelines and how to intervene effectively with their patients who smoke.
   
• Health Professions and Resident Training
  Health professions students and Residents are trained in the treatment of Tobacco Dependence and how to help their future patients quit smoking through interventions and referrals to community resources.
   
• AHEC Tobacco Training and Cessation (ATTAC) Program
  Health professions students attend an Afternoon of Learning that will motivate them to learn about tobacco dependence in ways that may affect their personal and professional behaviors. The program also has an outreach component that allows teams of health professions students to attend an Applied Day of Service at community middle schools where they will teach middle school students about tobacco risks. As a result of the ATTAC Program, Florida middle school students participate in classroom anti-tobacco activities led by health-careers role models and health professions students recognize the importance of community health promotion/disease prevention initiatives.
   
• Student Tobacco Reform Initiative: Knowledge for Eternity (STRIKE)
  Designed to reduce smoking and tobacco use rates for students and employees, the program utilizes proven intervention techniques, web-based cessation tools, and meetings with smoking cessation facilitators who offer encouragement and tips for quitting. There is limited funding to provide smoking cessation aids at reduced costs to those individuals who demonstrate a commitment to quitting and agree to weekly 30-minute meetings with a facilitator.
  
  To read more about STRIKE visit: http://www.tshc.fsu.edu/strike/Strike_info/cessation_program.htm
   
• Smoking Sensation Literacy Group
  Despite the proliferation of self-help cessation materials, there has been no systematic review of the accessibility of these materials to the general population of smokers in terms of literacy. Complicated concepts and language such as nicotine addiction, tolerance, physiological changes and proportional risk are extensive. Because the people most likely to smoke are individuals with the lowest levels of education and income, cessation self-help materials written at the most basic literacy level would be more effective in assisting smokers with lower reading and health literacy skills.
  
  FSU AHEC Program designed a service-learning project with the goal of developing self help materials to help people with low literacy skills quit smoking. The materials are being field tested at a variety of AHEC affiliated cessation sites.
   
• Smoking Cessation and Seniors
  A student has been specially trained to visit Senior Centers throughout north Florida to intervene with seniors and teach them about the negative effects of smoking and smokeless tobacco. The student will also talk about the benefits of quitting and encourage seniors to identify the ways in which their health will improve in the short term and long term if they quit using tobacco products.