Tobacco Cessation and Private Insurance under ACA:

Tobacco Cessation and Private Insurance under ACA: New Opportunities for Public Health

When: September 25, 2014

Time: 3pm Eastern – 4pm Eastern

Register Here

Join the American Lung Association and its partners on September 25th at 3pm eastern for an interactive webinar about the recent federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) guidance on tobacco cessation coverage in insurance plans and what that means for the public health community. The guidance specifies that plans cover all seven FDA-approved tobacco cessation medications and all three forms of counseling with no cost sharing or prior authorization.

The webinar will feature experts from the American Lung Association’s National Office as well as other experts to provide an overview of what the new guidance means, what states and insurance regulators can & are doing about it and next steps you can take. The webinar will also highlight a toolkit of materials the American Lung Association has created on this topic. Click here to register. Please contact Anne DiGiulio with any questions at anne.digiulio@lung.org.

“Tobacco Cessation Coverage: Implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2014”

The Smoking Cessation Leadership Center (SCLC) is pleased to invite you to our next free webinar, “Tobacco Cessation Coverage: Implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2014”, on May 15, 2014 at 1:00pm Eastern Time/ 10:00am Pacific Time (90 minutes).

We are honored to have Jennifer Singleterry, Director of National Health Policy at the American Lung Association, presenting on this topic for us.

Webinar Objectives: 

·         Explain major initiatives of the ACA, and identify areas that affect tobacco users

·         Identify tobacco cessation treatments covered for various populations in the state

·         Learn to implement changes to systems and practices that will help tobacco users quit and take advantage of new opportunities

REGISTER HERE:    https://cc.readytalk.com/r/35ndin4xmweb&eom

Additional resources [UPDATED]:

·         Recently released guidance by the Obama administration on tobacco cessation benefits available through the ACA (see Q5).

·         Press release from the American Lung Association on the new guidance

·         A report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and Breakaway Policy Strategies, “Eight Million and Counting: A Deeper Look at Premiums, Cost Sharing and Benefit Design in the New Health Insurance Marketplaces”

·         A report [PDF] by the North American Quitline Consortium (NAQC) answering the question, “How can we most effectively maximize the impact of the Affordable Care Act on access to, and coverage of, tobacco cessation for Medicaid enrollees?”

 Accreditation:

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

UCSF designates this live activity for a maximum of 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits^TM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the webinar activity.

Participants who join the LIVE session, on May 15, 2014, can claim CME/CEU credit for $35 per certificate. You will receive instructions on how to claim credit via the post webinar email.

Don’t need to claim CME/CEUs?  SCLC issues free certificates of attendance for those who want contact hours only.

Please feel free to forward this announcement to your colleagues.  For questions, contact Jennifer Matekuare, SCLC Operations Manager, at jmatekuare@medicine.ucsf.edu, or call toll-free (877) 509-3786.  This webinar will be recorded and may be viewed online on the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center’s website after the presentation. 

Update from Action to Quit

Reposted at http://www.tobaccodeathray.blogspot.com,

Last week we sent out a fact sheet on thirdhand smoke. A study reveals some new information on the harmful effects of thirdhand smoke. Read more HERE.

Most tobacco users make several quit attempts before they are successful. The American Lung Association received a grant from WellPoint Inc. to support their Quitter in You program. The campaign’s intention is to empower people trying to quit smoking by acknowledging that past quit attempts are not failures, but are normal and necessary steps along the way to quitting for good. A new website - http://www.quitterinyou.org/ - is one of the many features of the program.  Read more HERE.   

Can intervention for adult tobacco dependence be done in pediatric practices? A study to be published in the July 2013 issue of Pediatrics considers this question. The study is also detailed in this news story.

Yesterday Partnership for Prevention and nine other organizations submitted a joint public comment to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The comment urges CMS to include the four Joint Commission tobacco measures as a smoking cessation set in the 2013 Proposed Rule on Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS). If the tobacco measures are incorporated in the IPPS it would create a financial incentive for hospitals to report on them, extending higher annual payment rates to those hospitals that do so. As hospitals improve their performance, more inpatients will receive cost-effective tobacco cessation services and many will quit their tobacco use.

Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration authorized the marketing of two new tobacco products through the substantial equivalence (SE) pathway, and denied the marketing of four others. Additionally, the Agency announced the refusal to accept 20 “Exemption from SE” requests and the withdrawal of 136 SE reports by industry sponsors. Click HERE for more information.

Here is a new e-cigarette clinical trial out of Italy. It concluded, “In smokers not intending to quit, the use of e-cigarettes, with or without nicotine, decreased cigarette consumption and elicited enduring tobacco abstinence without causing significant side effects”.

Super Smokey and aging avatars.

Presented by Sandhia Rajan, ActionToQuit Program Manager

Kick Butts Advocacy Day 2013

Kick Butts Advocacy Day 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Mar. 20, 2013
at Vern Riffe Center, 19th Floor, Columbus, Ohio

 

Young people and their mentors are invited to join the American Lung Association to stand up and speak out against tobacco. Join us at the Statehouse to have fun and talk with legislators about the importance of funding tobacco prevention programs so that our state no longer ranks the worst in the country when it comes to helping kids avoid tobacco!

Our theme is "Don’t be a tobacco zombie," because when you’re addicted to tobacco you become a mindless slave to tobacco and the tobacco industry. Smokers are the real walking dead, and this day will be an opportunity for you to say you don’t want Ohio’s youth becoming mindless zombies to the tobacco industry.

 

Dress like a zombie … Or, if you’re not that great at makeup, we’ll have people available to do your makeup at the event. And that’s not all the fun, check out these other activities:  Free pizza party and snacks Prizes; Sign decorating Zombie costume contest; Press conference (you can be on TV!) Statehouse tour; Meetings with legislators Zombie march.

 

This event is made possible by a Kick Butts Day grant from the Campaign for Tobacco‐Free Kids.

To register, visit: www.ohiolung.org. Please sign up everyone in your group individually since we will need each individual’s home address to schedule legislative meetings.

For more information, contact Shelly Kiser, American Lung Association in Ohio, skiser@midlandlung.org, 614
‐279‐1700

ACA and Tobacco Cessation

ActionToQuit attended a briefing entitled The Affordable Care Act and Tobacco Cessation: Advocating for Clarity and Accountability.  The speaker, Mila Kofman, presented the results of a report published by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute examining 39 health plans to determine the degree to which they provided the cessation benefits required under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Mila is also the Executive Director of the District of Columbia Health Benefit Exchange and is a nationally recognized expert on private health insurance markets.  She discussed the finding of the report which revealed poor performance among insurers across the board in providing the ACA-required tobacco cessation benefits. In addition, she encouraged tobacco control advocates within states to inform their state insurance commissioner of these compliance issues and ensure tobacco users are receiving the coverage required under the law.

 

These results are especially relevant after yesterday’s announcement of the final rule outlining health insurance issuer standards for a core package of benefits, called essential health benefits, that insurers must cover both under the ACA.

 

For more information on ACA and how it impacts tobacco cessation, check out the American Lung Association’s toolkit which provides materials and analyses exploring ACA provisions that address tobacco cessation and prevention.

American Lung Assoc. Freedom from Smoking Facilitator Training

The American Lung Association’s Freedom From Smoking Facilitator Training

January 10 and 11, 2013 at the American Lung Association in Nevada in Las Vegas
 Reposted at http://www.tobaccodeathray.blogspot.com,

The American Lung Association in Nevada is offering our Freedom From Smoking Facilitator Training for our adult smoking cessation program. 

The FFS program includes comprehensive behavior modification techniques, including Motivational Interviewing training, and deals with both the physical and psychological addictive nature of nicotine. The group setting provides a much needed support element, which is basic for anyone trying to quit.  The program has been proven effective for over 25 years in helping those who want to quit smoking to quit for good.  Through the ALA’s partnership with the Nevada Tobacco Users Helpline, the Helpline provides limited nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to eligible FFS participants and we will discuss NRT referral protocol as part of the training.  Included in the training is practice in performing a brief intervention for tobacco use.

This 12 hour training costs $350.00 ($245.00 non-profit rate). The training includes the facilitator manual and participants are eligible to be certified as an American Lung Association Freedom From Smoking Facilitator once they have facilitated one Freedom From Smoking program.  Our trainer is Richard Davis, an experienced Freedom From Smoking facilitator and trainer.  We will brown bag for lunch.  Please bring your own hot beverages. 

Please complete the attached confidential registration form and return by mail to ALAN, 3552 W. Cheyenne Ave., Ste. 130, North Las Vegas, NV 89032.  Fax to 702-431-6630.  Or e-mail rdavis@lungnevada.org.  Register online at

 http://action.lungusa.org/site/PageNavigator/Freedom_From_Smoking_Facilitator_Training.html

 Payment is due on day of training.  Make checks payable to the American Lung Association in Nevada.  For more information, please call Richard Davis at 702-431-6348.