|  ADHA
Establishes Tobacco Cessation Initiative
In November 2003, the American Dental
Hygienists' Association (ADHA) received a grant from the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation's Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at
the University of California, San Francisco to launch a nationwide
effort by dental hygienists to promote smoking cessation.
According to a special report published
in the January 15 New England Journal of Medicine, less
than five percent of smokers are able to quit on their own. Research
also indicates that if smoking cessation increased from 2.5% to
10%, an additional 2.4 million lives would be saved each year. ADHA
is dedicated to bringing dental hygienists the information they
need to promote smoking cessation to their patients.
"Oral health screenings provide a unique
opportunity to give patients information that could save their livesÑand
to place dental hygiene on the front line of smoking cessation intervention,"
says Tammi O. Byrd, RDH, ADHA president. "The advice of a dental
hygienist can be a major motivation for a quit attempt by a patient
who smokes."
The ADHA Tobacco Cessation Task Force has
committed to an action plan that will use as the core of its program
a three-step approach to smoking cessation intervention: "Ask.
Advise. Refer." Efforts are now under way to develop protocols,
scripts, and a toolkit to facilitate smoking cessation intervention
by dental hygienists.
Each state will have a designated smoking
cessation initiative (SCI) liaison dedicated to providing local
components and individual dental hygiene practitioners in the states
with information, recommendations on resources, and advice.
Among the many resources available to SCI
liaisons and dental hygiene practitioners through the ADHA initiative
will be smoking cessation fact sheets, a Web site dedicated to smoking
cessation advice for practitioners, marketing and promotional materials
such as posters and brochures, and a quitline resource list.
For more information on the smoking cessation
initiative program and how to find the SCI liaison in your state,
please email ADHA SCI coordinator Natalie Nikolich at smoking-cessation@adha.net
or call 800/243-ADHA, extension 220.
- Natalie Nikolich
|
