How Health Care Providers Can Help Patients Quit Smoking

When health care providers provide brief, simple advice about quitting smoking they increase the likelihood that patients will quit and remain quit a year later.¹ Health systems can support the role of health professionals in tobacco cessation by promoting, providing coverage for, and supporting delivery of treatment, quit attempts, and successful quitting.

According to the Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence Clinical Practice Guideline, 2008 Update, “tobacco use presents a rare confluence of circumstances:

• a highly significant health threat;
• a disinclination among clinicians to intervene consistently; and
• the presence of effective interventions.

This last point is buttressed by evidence that tobacco dependence interventions, if delivered in a timely and effective manner, significantly reduce the smoker’s risk of suffering from smoking-related disease. Indeed, it is difficult to identify any other condition that presents such a mix of lethality, prevalence, and neglect, despite effective and readily available interventions.”

On the various pages of this section, we strive to provide the evidence-based tools and resources for devising, implementing, and supporting a system for identifying, documenting, and treating every tobacco user who wants to quit:

• Tobacco Use in California
• The Importance of Quit Attempts
• The Role of Health Professionals
• The Role of Health Systems
• How to Talk to Your Patients
• Treating Special Populations
• Pharmacotherapy
• Other Tobacco Products
• e-Cigarettes
• Evidence Base for Helpline Services
• Helpline Referral Options

^{1 Stead, L.F., G. Bergson, and T. Lancaster. 2008. Physician advice for smoking cessation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD000165. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000165.pub3.}