Notes from the Meeting Table: smokers

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Health Systems for a Tobacco-Free NY Grant

Deadline: November 22, 2013

Funding Amount: The anticipated total funding for this initiative, pending availability of funds, is just over $15.5 million for 11 contracts (10 regional; one statewide) over a projected four-year and nine-month contract period. Annual funding amounts for 10 regional contracts are expected to be up to $300,000 per contract; one statewide contract is expected to be funded up to $275,000.

Eligibility: Public and private not-for-profit agencies and organizations in New York State, including but not limited to: local government and public health agencies, health care systems, primary care networks, academic institutions, community-based organizations, volunteer associations and professional associations with experience in health systems level change to improve quality of care. Experience working with low income and low educational attainment populations and with individuals with serious mental illness is expected.

Agency: NYS Department of Health

Grant ID: FAU Control #1306271049

Summary: The New York State Department of Health (Department) Bureau of Tobacco Control (BTC) seeks applications from organizations that will work to engage health care systems to improve the delivery of guideline-concordant care for tobacco dependence through systems and policy change at the organizational level. A systems approach is consistent with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Health Impact Pyramid (Frieden, 2010) and interventions that have broader population effect and require lower individual level effort. Health care organizations that serve disproportionately affected populations (low income, low educational attainment, and serious mental illness) are the priority focus for this contract. Health system interventions should result in expansion of the reach of evidence-based smoking cessation interventions without direct provision of those services. The focus is on working with higher level administrative decision-makers to ensure that the providers in the health systems they oversee deliver appropriate and aggressive tobacco dependence treatment to its members.

Click on link: NYS Department of Health

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Can Electronic Cigarettes Challenge Big Tobacco?

A curious television commercial aired across the

U.S.

last month that, until its final few seconds, was indistinguishable from an ad for cigarettes — even though such advertising has been banned from broadcast TV for four decades.

In the television spot, the “cigarette” smoke, ash tip and flame look real. The carton looks authentic. The man smoking it looks satisfied.

The smoke, however, is vapor. The ash tip, plastic. The flame, simulated. The “cigarette” is a so-called electronic cigarette — in this case, an NJOY King, the first smokeless, nicotine-delivering, cigarette-like object that (at least according to its manufacturer) looks and feels and “smokes” like the real thing. Television commercials for NJOY Kings began running nationally in early December, making it the first smoking ad to run since Jan. 1, 1971, when Virginia Slims ran one final commercial a minute before the midnight deadline during The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. (President Nixon had signed legislation banning cigarette ads on TV and radio the year before.)

E-cigarettes, invented in 2003, currently account for less than 1% of the $80 billion U.S. cigarette market. But they are growing rapidly: UBS projects that sales, which have doubled every year since 2008, will reach $1 billion in 2013. Numbers like that have put Big Tobacco on notice. “Consumption of e-cigs may overtake traditional cigarettes in the next decade,” predicts Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog. “And they’ll only evolve and improve as time goes forward — at far less risk. The technology portion of it is sort of like Apple. This is just Version 1.”