CA Quits held their annual Tobacco-Free Champions' meeting on November 7th, 2023. A total of 61 participants representing local health departments, health systems, community-based organizations, and state agencies joined to learn how partners can work together to promote tobacco cessation treatment. 

The keynote speaker, Dr. Karen Mark (Medical Director at the California Department of Health Care Services) addressed how CalAIM and Population Health Management are levers for transformation in "Achieving Quality and Health Equity in Medi-Cal."

This year's meeting topics included:

• Population Health & Health Equity: Kick It California & Medi-Cal Managed Care Plan partnerships
• Community Capacity Building: Bringing Cessation Services to Communities
• Vape Use and Impact on Tobacco Quality Metrics for Public Hospital Clinics 

Thank you to all our presenters and partners who continue to collaborate to improve quality and health equity!

For 2024, the tobacco quality metric is prioritized again for the Department of Health Care Services' Quality Incentive Pool (QIP) program! The 2024 QIP tobacco quality metric now includes e-cigarettes and vapes in the assessment of tobacco status. We thank the Department of Health Care Services and public hospital leadership for supporting this update.

CA Quits supports public hospital clinic systems in their tobacco quality metric improvement work.  Our first CA Quits Tobacco Learning Collaborative (TLC) was in-person during the QIP Annual Conference held in March 2023 at Sacramento, CA. Twenty-three QIP Health Systems (11 small public hospitals and 12 large public hospitals) continued to meet through quarterly virtual meetings in our 2023 TLC.

Topics covered included:

• Improving Tobacco Quality Metric with a Direct Quitline Call
• Addressing Care Gaps & Health Equity
• Kick It CA: Tobacco Cessation Promotion & Referrals
• Closing Care Gap Strategies: Vapes/E-cigarettes in Tobacco Assessment
• Lung Cancer & Great American Smokeout Month
• Overview of TLC Baseline Survey

Quarterly TLC virtual meetings will resume in the new year to support shared learning and peer-to-peer engagement. For more information, please contact CA Quits Public Hospital Systems Coordinator, Moreen Sharma: mmsharma@ucdavis.edu.



CA Quits facilitated two Medi-Cal Managed Care Plan (MCP) workgroups where 15 MCPs participated.

Topics discussed included:

• Opportunities to promote health equity to align with California’s flavored tobacco retail ban that went into effect last December 2022.
• Implementation update on the three MCPs who partner with Kick It CA to conduct population health outreach services to Medi-Cal members.
• DHCS overview of the Community Health Worker (CHW) Benefit and Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Local Health Departments.

We look forward to our continued partnership with MCPs in 2024 to find opportunities to assist their members in receiving equitable access to tobacco treatment services.

If you have any questions about the MCP workgroup or would like to participate in the workgroup, contact Shannon Haggitt, Plan & Partner Manager, srhaggitt@ucdavis.edu.

Barriers keep NHPI and LGBTQ smokers from breathing

Two groups that have high rates of smoking and vaping — the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community and the LGBTQ community — have specific hurdles that prevent them from quitting: the cost of cessation therapies and a lack of culturally specific care, according to survey reports from the California Health Interview Survey (2019-2020).

• Prenatal Exposure to Tobacco and Cannabis in Six Race/Ethnicity Groups during the First Three Years after Legalization of Cannabis for Recreational Use in California

• What’s Next for CalAIM? How Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) is responding to early implementation barriers facing this transformative initiative

Webinars

• 1/11/24 – FDA Grand Rounds hosts The Real Cost Campaign: A Decade of Preventing Youth Tobacco Use

• 3/27/24 – Center for Tobacco Independence hosts Products on the Shelves: An Overview of the Tobacco & Nicotine Products Available Today

CA Quits | www.caquits.com.