December 20, 2012
 
Two faculty members in the Public Health Leadership Program of the Gillings School of Global Public Health have been awarded a $99,917 grant from Pfizer to design and execute smoking cessation programs at three inpatient Alcohol and Drug Treatment Centers in North Carolina.

Dr. Cheryll Lesneski

Dr. Cheryll Lesneski
Dr. Rohit Ramaswamy

Dr. Rohit Ramaswamy

Cheryl Lesneski, DrPH, clinical assistant professor, and Rohit Ramaswamy, PhD, Gillings Visiting Clinical Associate Professor, will co-lead the project, “Systematic Design of Patient and Staff Smoking Cessation Processes at State-Operated Substance Abuse Facilities in North Carolina,” in collaboration with Susan Saik, MD, medical director for the N.C. Division of State-Operated Health Care Facilities.

The project is timely, given that North Carolina is in the process of establishing regulations for mental health facilities in the state to become smoke-free campuses in 2013. Implementing smoking cessation programs that will be effective and sustainable is an important objective for reaching the goal.

In addition to training clinical staff members at all three ADATCs, the project aims to use a different approach to past interventions.

“During evaluation, if an intervention does not achieve the desired results, it is difficult to ascertain whether the intervention failed because it was intrinsically flawed, or whether poor implementation diminished the effect of the intervention,” the grantees wrote in the proposal. “By reducing variability in the implementation process, the full potential of interventions can be realized and [their] effectiveness can be appropriately evaluated.”

Using performance data from the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Abuse Service’s North Carolina Treatment Outcomes and Program Performance System (NC TOPPS), researchers chose to implement the package in one facility, the 80-bed R.J. Blackley Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Center in Butner, N.C., where the smoking rate was exceptionally high (81 percent) for admitted patients. If the package is effective at that location, an implementation guide will be replicated for the other two centers.

The success of the project at the treatment center in Butner will be determined using the following measures:

  • The treatment center must identify and document the smoking behaviors of admitted patients;
  • Patients must receive counseling on cessation, as well as cessation medications while in the facility;
  • Patients must receive referrals on cessation counseling and cessation medications upon discharge; and
  • The smoking status of patients must be documented at 30 days after discharge.

According to the North Carolina Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, the smoking rate for individuals with substance use disorders in treatment settings was 63 percent in 2010. By comparison, the smoking rate of the general population is 19.8 percent.


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UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: David Pesci, director of communications, (919) 962-2600 or dpesci@unc.edu.
 

 

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