Overview

Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, causing more than 440,000 deaths each year and resulting in an annual cost of more than $75 billion in direct medical costs.

To reduce the loss of life and the financial burden of tobacco use, communities must take a comprehensive approach to prevention and control. These efforts should include preventing young people from starting to smoke, eliminating exposure to secondhand smoke, promoting smoking cessation, and eliminating ethnic and racial disparities in tobacco use.

At a time when most local public health budgets are stretched to cover critical infrastructure, resources needed to meet these challenges must be used wisely. To do so requires investing in strategies with proven success. The Guide to Community Preventive Services has systematically reviewed existing research and developed viable recommendations for responding to many preventable health risks, including tobacco use.

The case study for this program will focus on the efforts of the Onondaga County Health Department and their community partners in Syracuse, NY, to save lives and improve the health of their citizens by using evidence based strategies to prevent and control tobacco use.

Goal

This program will seek to increase awareness of the value and the process involved in utilizing evidence based resources to prevent and control the use of tobacco.

Objectives

• Describe two current trends in building sustainable local efforts to prevent and control tobacco use.
• Identify three evidence based interventions recommended by the Community Guide for tobacco prevention and control
• Identify three reasons to use the Community Guide as a primary source for evidence based public health practice.
• Identify two strategies for integrating evidence based resources into existing tobacco control and prevention efforts.
  

Audience

Public health leaders and professionals from local and state government agencies, policy makers, purchasers of health care, physicians, community-based health organizations, academic institutions, federal agencies and others who seek to learn more about the value of using evidence based strategies to improve tobacco prevention and control.