Update from Action to Quit

ActionToQuit posting, reposted at http://www.tobaccodeathray.blogspot.com

The DHHS and the National Center for Tobacco Policy are co-sponsoring a reprise of last year’s successful “Summit on Tobacco Policy.” Like its predecessor, Summit II will bring together those with experience in tobacco-free college campus policy with those considering, or in the process of implementing, such a policy. The conference will be held June 12-14, 2013 at the Kansas City Airport Marriott Hotel. For information about Summit II visit www.tobaccofreepolicysummit.com.

 

Resources shared by Gustavo Torrez  of Fenway Health posted at http://www.tobaccodeathray.blogspot.com,

I wanted to share one resource of a report compiled by Dathan Johnson at the Arkansas Department of Public Health, Tobacco Prevention & Cessation Program:
http://www.lgbttobacco.org/files/ArkansasLGBTSurvey.pdf

In addition, we created a sharing our lessons document around treatment for LGBT + communities:
http://www.lgbttobacco.org/files/HIV%20SOL%20Final.pdf

I am sure we will get more resources from the field but here are a couple to start off with along with a link back to our resource library with similar resources:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=007089905494273129946%3Ah28wxiuzz7w&cof=FORID%3A0&q=SOL+hiv+tobacco+treatment&sa.x=0&sa.y=0#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=HIV

Feb 28 deadline for Consortium Nomination

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

Less than 10 days are remaining to recommend candidates for the NAQC Board of Directors.  We are counting on you to help us find outstanding candidates. All NAQC members may submit candidate names and you are welcome to recommend names of candidates whom you nominated in past  years.

This year, we will be electing up to 3 new directors. It is our intention to put forward up to 5 names to the membership for election. The Board chose this approach to allow for a meaningful vote without invoking undue competition.

The Board is responsible for setting NAQC’s strategic direction, connecting with its members and ensuring NAQC’s advancement and sustainability.

During the next few years quitlines will experience many changes in the populations served, technology used, and approaches to sustainability. NAQC seeks candidates for the board who are innovative “difference makers” and who can help guide us through the changes ahead. Candidates for the board should have senior level experience, possess leadership skills, be strategic thinkers and display professional and collegial demeanor. Board members do not represent their employer or any specific constituency, but instead work together to create a global vision for NAQC. The board seeks members who are committed to NAQC’s mission and values, contribute diverse viewpoints and cultural experiences, and have expertise in some of the areas listed below:

• Finance: The Board is responsible for financial oversight of the organization, and seeks candidates with expertise in this area. Currently, there are no CPAs or MBAs on the Board.
• Understanding issues related to organizational sustainability for NAQC: Ensuring sustainability of the organization is a key responsibility of the Board. NAQC seeks candidates who offer strategic leadership in fundraising and working with donor and/or grant-making organizations.
• Policy governance of a not-for-profit organization: Experience on a non-profit board is extremely helpful to candidates. NAQC follows a policy governance model developed by John Carver which focuses on business issues and strategic leadership. The Board does not focus on program development; this issue is delegated to staff.
• Operations of a quitline: NAQC seeks candidates with experience in the operations of quitlines.
• Addressing priority populations: Addressing disparities in health is a key objective for NAQC. We seek candidates with an expertise and background in cultural knowledge and experience in reaching priority populations.
• Making quitlines sustainable: Ensuring quitline sustainability is a key objective for NAQC. Recently, government funding for quitlines and tobacco control programs has been decreasing. NAQC seeks candidates who offer strategic leadership on new approaches to sustainability planning for quitlines, including public-private partnerships and integration of quitlines in health systems.

Board members are elected for three-year terms and can be reelected once. The annual time commitment for board members includes four one to one-and-a-half day meetings (plus travel to and preparation for the meeting) and approximately 30 hours of additional time for committee work.

For each person you would like to recommend, please provide the following information to Penny Thomsen, Chair of the Nomination Committee, c/o Board@naquitline.org by February 28:

1. Full name, contact information and brief resume for the person;
2. Your rationale for recommending this person as a candidate; and
3. Confirmation that you have spoken to the person and know that s/he is willing to have her/his name put forward to the Nomination Committee for consideration.

Next Steps: After the February 28 deadline, the Nomination Committee will review all suggested candidates, may follow up with selected individuals for additional information, and will propose a slate of nominees to the full Board of Directors at the next Board meeting. After approval of the slate, the nominees then stand for election by the NAQC membership. A single representative from each organizational member of NAQC is eligible to vote. The election will be conducted online from June 1-14.  The new directors will be announced in August.
 
If you have questions, please contact Penny Thomsen, Chair of the Nomination Committee, at Board@naquitline.org or Linda Bailey, President and CEO, at lbailey@naquitline.org. You can find a list of board members here and detailed information on the election process here.

Thank you for your time and effort to participate in this important activity.

Penny Thomsen
Chair of the Nomination Committee

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.

Mortality: H.I.V.-Positive Smokers Lose More Years to Tobacco Than to the Virus, a Study Says

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/health/smoking-cuts-hiv-patients-lives-more-than-virus-study-says.html?_r=1&     By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

H.I.V. patients who obtain good treatment but who smoke lose more years of life to tobacco than to the virus, a new Danish study has found.

The study, which looked at nearly 3,000 Danish H.I.V. patients from 1995 — the year antiretroviral triple therapy became standard — to 2010, was published online last month by the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

A 35-year-old H.I.V. patient who did not smoke was likely to live to age 78, while one who smoked was likely to die before age 63, the report found.

(The study’s authors said they excluded people who inject drugs, even though most addicts smoke, because their “risk-taking behavior” and causes of death “differ significantly from the rest of the H.I.V.-infected population.”)

The study also compared Danish H.I.V. patients with a pool of 10,642 average Danes of the same age and sex. H.I.V. appeared to make smoking much more lethal. The risk of early death from cancer or heart disease was much higher among infected smokers than among noninfected ones, and smoking was more closely linked to early death than was obesity, excess drinking or baseline viral load (a measure of how sick a patient was at diagnosis).

Denmark has universal health care. H.I.V. drugs are free and care is coordinated by AIDS centers around the country. “Treatment failures and loss to follow-up are rare,” the study said. It urged doctors to strongly advise their H.I.V. patients to quit smoking.

Posted by  David Mariner, The DC Center for the LGBT Community,

1318 U Street NW | Washington, DC 20009 www.thedccenter.org | 202 682-2245

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

CDC focusing ads towards LGBT Community

The latest data from CDC shows that LGBT people smoke at rates 68% higher than the general population. With such high tobacco use rates within our community, you would think that there are efforts taking place across the country to help members of our community break the nicotine habit. Commonly cessation efforts do not reach out, or even speak to our communities which considering the tobacco use rates in our community is quite troubling. Every day we go to work we are striving to make a difference, helping our friends, family, and even strangers through our programming focused on reducing tobacco use within our community, and helping to counter the tobacco industrys practices as they are searching to recruit thousands of daily smokers to make up for the ones they (and we) have lost. I have never smoked but I have plenty of friends and family who have broke the nicotine habit and many more who are in the process or thinking about quitting.

I say all of this to celebrate CDC for taking steps to be more inclusive of their outreach methods to help all people break the nicotine habit. There is a new blog up today from Dr. Scout on HuffPost Gay Voices which we are thrilled to share: CDC Reaches Out to LGBT People in Smoking Cessation Ads. Click the link and make sure you share it on twitter, facebook, email etc. It's about getting the word out there, and hopefully we all can help our friends, family, and loved ones take that next step in their quit journey.

Posted by Fenway Health reposted at http://www.tobaccodeathray.blogspot.com

CA Tobacco Control Position Listing

Job Title:  BACR Program/Project Director  Reports To: Chief Operations Officer   Part time: 60 to 80% time

Job Purpose:  Direct a tobacco education project serving the Russian-speaking community of San Francisco and San Mateo.  The project is designed to increase awareness about tobacco related issues and educate decision-makers on policies to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke, reduce youth access to tobacco and counter pro-tobacco messages in advertising and the media.  A particular emphasis of the work will be to reduce exposure of second-hand smoke in multi-unit housing, create culturally and linguistically appropriate materials and recruit and train community members to advocate for policy adoption.   

 Primary Responsibilities:  Responsible for management and operations of the program/project. 

Specific Responsibilities:
 1.  Plan and manage the operations of the project.  Monitor achievement of project outcome goals and objectives.
2.      Oversee the budget of approximately $190,000 and maintain fiscal accountability for the project
3.      Write and process all required documents, contracts and statistical reports. Monitor and collect all necessary BACR internal paperwork/data.
4.      Actively participate in agency committees, agency planning and other agency sponsored activities.
5.     Hire, train and supervise staff. Ensure quality of staff performance. Create environment among staff consistent with BACR Best Practices that includes team building and celebration.
6.      Monitor adherence to agency policies and procedures
7.  Develop and maintain positive relationships with all stakeholders, including other service providers, community leaders,client groups, government and civic organizations
8.      Clear and direct communication with ED/AED on all pertinent matters related to the operation of the project.
9.      Actively seek funding to expand programming.
  
Qualifications: 
Education:  B.A. in related area of study plus at least three years of continuous employment as a supervisor or coordinator.  Emphasis on Public Health or Public Administration is desirable. 

 Skills:  Demonstrated skills in finance, budgeting, program development, planning, personnel administration and supervision and community relations. Demonstrated success in managing government contracts is required.   Strong ties to the Russian-speaking community and experience working on public health and/or tobacco education and policy projects is highly desirable.  Grant writing is a plus.

Personal Qualities:  A commitment to and strong belief in the mission of the agency; ability to maintain goals and priorities in dealing with varying problems, demands, and limitations; ability to be flexible in working with people and organizations with different viewpoints. This position requires excellent communication and organizational skills.

 
Interested parties should email their resume and cover letter to Mary Jo Williams – mjwilliams@bacr.org.  BACR is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  No phone calls please.

 

Sally A. Shine, Director of Human Resources, BAY AREA COMMUNITY RESOURCES, 171 Carlos Drive, San Rafael, CA 94903.  Ph:  415/755-2306  Fx:  415/444-5559