Cessation Intervention Sustainability Strategies

How can Tobacco Control Program staff encourage health systems and community partners to enhance sustainability efforts for tobacco treatment services? 

The key to effective system changes to integrate cessation interventions is the consistent, on-going evaluation of both outcomes and processes. Learn more about this with the strategies and tools below.

There are always ways to make processes better, which can lead to sustainable interventions:

• Increasing efficiency and improving time management
  This might look like streamlining an activity or improving a workflow by eliminating a step or steps that don’t add value to a system process.  
• Improving Workflow
  Workflows can impact the quality and delivery of tobacco treatment services at all levels.
• Increasing returns on investments 
  This might look like changing the allocation of budgets or staff time to adjust in order to add more value to a system process
• Optimizing the Work Environment
  This might look like organizational policy changes to enhance or support a tobacco-free environment. Other changes to optimize the work environment might be securing marketing or treatment materials to aid in staff’s use of key items to communicate with patients about tobacco treatment services.
• Improving client/patient experiences
  In order to benefit from comprehensive tobacco treatment, clients and patients need to know that they can recover from tobacco use and dependence. Marketing materials like signage and other tools can encourage utilization and bi-directional communications between clients or patients and an organization’s staff.
• Increasing process consistency 
  This might look like enhancements to an organization’s EHR system through the use of clinical reminders and other key EHR tools that encourage screening, assessment and referral for treatment of tobacco use and dependency. Consistent adherence to a process improves outcomes and can highlight opportunities for further improvement.  
• Error proofing processes 
  This might look like ensuring that best practice reminders are enabled in their Electronic Health Record (EHR) or Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems, and that those best practice reminders follow the newest evidence-based clinical recommendations. This EHR improvement can reduce errors by making best practices an inherent part of the process. Error proofing impacts client and patient safety and can improve outcomes.

The American Lung Association has developed the Cessation Intervention Sustainability Assessment Tool. This interactive assessment for tobacco control program teams and their partners helps identify organizational strengths and targets to further opportunities for improvements in planning for sustainability. The Lung Association's Cessation Intervention Sustainability Assessment Tool will automatically generate a scored summary report that is emailed to the person taking the assessment. This tool is available for use by all tobacco control program staff and other public health professionals and their community partners that are working towards health system changes that integrate evidence-based cessation interventions.

The scored assessment report can help point organizational leadership teams towards areas of opportunity within their system to further their objectives to sustaining comprehensive tobacco treatment services. The results of the assessment can also guide tobacco control program staff towards curated resources to provide technical assistance to community partners.