Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maine
South Portland, ME
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maine (BCBSME), a 110,000-member IPA-model plan, is currently in the third year of its population-based tobacco control initiative. This strategy is based on the 1996 AHCPR Clinical Practice Guideline on Smoking Cessation. Benefit design, education, network reimbursement, and design of all member-, employer-, and community-centered materials and interventions were driven by the Guideline. The program is an integrated, systematic approach to involving members, providers, and BCBSME staff and provides extensive coordination between the science-driven recommendations and the plan's operations.
The program has now witnessed a 38-percent relative improvement in smoking prevalence among adults, including a 44-percent improvement in the 18-34 age group compared with the same age cohort in the state.
For more information, contact: Director of Health Improvement, Meredith Tipton, (207) 822-7537.
Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound
Seattle, WA
Group Health Cooperative partnered with seven other community-based organizations to ensure Washington state legislators appropriated tobacco settlement dollars to fund health care priorities, including tobacco prevention and cessation. Group Health applied several primary strategies to achieve this end: direct lobbying of members of the legislature; a highly visible paid media campaign; and a heavy emphasis on grassroots organizing and advocacy.
As a result of this effort, Washington became the only state in the nation to commit all funding from the master tobacco settlement to tobacco control and other public health priorities.
For more information, contact: Director for Health Promotion, Tim McAfee, M.D., (206) 287-4329.
The Oregon Statewide Tobacco Cessation Project
This project, initiated in 1998, was established to promote the implementation of tobacco cessation interventions, based on the 1996 AHCPR Clinical Practice Guideline on Smoking Cessation. Several partnerships were formed between the Oregon Health Division (OHD), the statewide Tobacco-Free Coalition of Oregon (TOFCO) Health Systems Task Force, the Office of Medical Assistance Programs (OMAP), and the managed health care systems that provide services for the Medicaid population. The purpose of these partnerships was to combat the state's rate of tobacco use and formulate a policy to include the provision of tobacco cessation intervention into contracts with managed health care plans. An adapted version of the 1996 AHCPR Guideline was then developed to better define the role of health plans and providers in Oregon. This Oregon version was adopted among the partner organizations and used as the basis for implementation at the health plan level and the provider level, especially for the Medicaid population. These efforts led to the statewide integration of the Oregon Quit Line, a state-funded cessation help line for one-on-one counseling.
For more information, contact: Wendy Bjornson, (503) 238-7706.
Tufts Health Plan
Waltham, MA
The percentage of women who smoke during pregnancy in Massachusetts is 12.2 percent (Massachusetts Department of Public Health, 1997) while the percentage of pregnant Tufts Health Plan members who smoke is approximately 9.0 percent. Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of preterm delivery, low birth weight, and greater long-term health risks for both mother and baby. Thus, in 1995, Tufts Health Plan collaborated with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to develop a smoking cessation program for pregnant women.
The objective was simple: to reduce the number of cigarettes smoked during pregnancy and/or assist the member to permanently stop smoking. Data in 1998 demonstrated that the program outcomes are consistent with its objectives. Telephone tests showed that there was a statistical difference between the average number of cigarettes smoked at the initial counseling call (8.4) and the average number smoked at the time of call five (5.2). In addition, 30.3 percent of program participants who gave birth quit smoking at least 2 weeks before they delivered and 35.5 percent of all women in the program met their self defined quit date.
For more information, contact: Program Manager, Anne Flaherty, RN, (781) 466-9425.
Network Health Plan
Menasha, WI
Through its 24-hour health advice line, Network Health Plan offers its members a multifaceted smoking cessation program. The "Call It Quits" program uses telephone counseling to assess the individual's smoking habit and readiness to quit and develops a successful personalized cessation plan to help the individual stop smoking.
The objectives of Network's program were to: develop a program that could be accessible to their growing membership in 13 counties in Wisconsin; focus on member and community populations needs that target cessation interventions; obtain broad and organizational support through a program that would be easy for the more than 600 health care providers to understand and refer patients; integrate smoking cessation with other existing continuous quality improvement programs and guidelines, e.g., HEDIS and NCQA; eliminate any barriers for individuals wanting to quit smoking; and maintain a satisfactory quit rate above or at the national average.
For more information, contact: Health Promotion Manager, Patsy Romback, (920) 720-1273.
Current as of June 2000Internet Citation:
Achievements in Tobacco Cessation: Case Studies. June 2000. U.S. Public Health Service. http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/tobacco/smcasest.htm
Return to Tobacco Cessation Guideline Index
Surgeon General Home Page
Department of Health and Human
Services