Celebrate 5 Years of Accomplishments

Over the past 5 years, CA Quits engaged with over 100 partners statewide including health systems, Medi-Cal managed care plans, and public health agencies to promote and share best practices on tobacco assessment and treatment. These efforts include implementing cessation referral systems to Kick It California (KIC), the free state quitline. We are grateful for all our partners and their commitment to improving tobacco treatment services!

Although we have ended the first chapter of CA Quits, a new chapter has begun! Looking ahead to our next 3 years, CA Quits will focus more on population health strategies to encourage health equity among public hospital clinics and Medi-Cal managed care plans. Public health partnerships for cessation will be important for local collaborations. 

Annual Quality Incentive Pool (QIP) Conference

On March 27-28, CA Quits participated in the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) annual conference for public hospital clinics participating in its Quality Incentive Pool (QIP) program. The public hospital clinic systems report on annual quality metrics, including for tobacco assessment and counseling (QIP was previously called Public Hospital Redesign and Incentives in Medi-Cal or PRIME). Highlights included Medi-Cal’s ongoing transformation of care emphasizing population health, public hospital clinics sharing data with Medi-Cal managed care plans, and the statewide data sharing framework.

At the pre-conference meeting for Learning Collaboratives, the CA Quits team (Moreen Sharma, Elisa Tong, and Cindy Valencia) led an interactive group discussion on advancing population health strategies for tobacco users with examples from Tahoe Forest and UC Davis.

At the full conference, Dr. Elisa Tong presented on "Quitting Flavored Tobacco: Addressing Health Equity in Population Health," where she discussed the recent retail ban on flavored tobacco and the opportunity for health professionals to promote cessation and address health equity.

For a special award, DHCS leadership recognized Dr. David Lown, as he steps down from his years of leadership as Chief Medical Officer of the California Health Care Safety Net Institute. CA Quits also thanks Dr. Lown, a CA Quits advisory board member, for his help to require that QIP tobacco quality metric reporting show how many smokers were counseled. This change has greatly improved public hospital clinics’ understanding of tobacco treatment needs in their patient population.    

For more information about the tobacco learning collaborative or additional support, contact Moreen Sharma: mmsharma@ucdavis.edu

In light of the flavor ban, it is important to educate health professionals about the flavor ban, how flavored tobacco products make it harder to quit, and the steps and resources on how they can assist their patients and clients to quit commercial tobacco products.

CA Quits can send you printed flyers to distribute to your health professionals.

Provider Flyer

CA Quits developed a new resource on How Health Professionals Can Support Patients to Quit Flavored Tobacco Products.

Community

Distribute messages to the community and health plan members on how to access free quit services.

Youth & Young Adults

Engage teens and young adults to quit flavored tobacco products by sharing social media messages.

From the UC Davis Health News:

A new University of California study shows long-term success when healthcare providers make electronic referrals (e-referrals) for their patients to California’s tobacco quitline. The study is the first collaboration of its kind to be conducted by all five University of California health systems. The paper was published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.

Quitlines offer free help to stop tobacco use. They can double the chances that a person stays quit for good.

“Even though the five UC health systems are under the umbrella of UC Health, they each are independent, which is why the implementation benefited from a whole-systems approach, taking into account the different IT systems and clinical workflows,” said Elisa Tong, lead author of the study and UC Davis leader of CA Quits.

• Read the American Cancer Society and California Dialogue on Cancer’s report on the current state of lung cancer screening in California, identify barriers and opportunities for improving lung cancer screening, and recommend strategies for improving screening.

• California Department of Public Health - California Tobacco Facts and Figures 2022

• 7/20/2023: Webinar - Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at UCSF, "Access to Tobacco Treatment for the Justice-Involved: The Intersection of Policy, Practice, and Research”

CA Quits | www.caquits.com.