NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE AND PFIZER INC PUBLISH STRATEGIES TO TREAT TOBACCO USE AND DEPENDENCE
Sixth edition of Quality Profiles™: The Leadership Series highlights successful efforts to implement evidence-based tobacco cessation initiatives.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), in collaboration with Pfizer Inc, today released a new publication profiling evidence-based strategies for treating tobacco use and dependence.
Quality Profiles™: The Leadership Series—Focus on Tobacco Dependence and Smoking Cessation offers comprehensive, forward-thinking commentary on the need to advance smoking-cessation initiatives and evidence-based disease management.
“For more than four decades, health care leaders have sent a clear message to the public: if you smoke, quit. But 1 in 5 Americans still smoke today,” said NCQA President Margaret E. O’Kane. “This edition of Quality Profiles showcases new and innovative ways that health plans and employers are collaborating to help their workers stop smoking, and enjoy the better health that results.”
Tobacco use is the nation’s leading preventable cause of disease and death.1 Effective tobacco management initiatives highlighted in Quality Profiles include efforts to encourage smoking cessation, prevent tobacco use, and reduce exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.
NCQA and Pfizer developed the sixth edition of The Leadership Series to provide direction and support to health plans, employers, and health care professionals (HCPs) as they promote healthier behaviors with the goal of advancing quality of life and improving clinical outcomes.
“Despite the availability of effective treatments for tobacco dependence, quality gaps still exist in the health care industry in terms of implementation,” said Pfizer Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Joseph M. Feczko, M.D. “Our goal is to share practical examples of successful approaches that can serve as models of tobacco-cessation initiatives.”
This addition to the Quality Profiles series includes diverse discussions supporting tobacco-cessation strategies, such as:
- Factors that encourage smoking cessation
- The need for specific clinical training and education in tobacco-cessation techniques
- The latest research and trends for treating tobacco use and dependence
- Application of pharmacologic support for tobacco cessation
- The long-term value to plans and employers of investing in a tobacco cessation program
To obtain a free copy of Quality Profiles™: The Leadership Series—Focus on Tobacco Dependence and Smoking Cessation or editions of the publication focused on other topics, call 1-888-412-3090 or visit www.qualityprofiles.org.
NCQA is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations and recognizes physicians in key clinical areas. NCQA’s Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care. NCQA is committed to providing health care quality information through the Web, media, and data licensing agreements, in order to help consumers, employers, and others make more informed health care choices. For more information, visit www.ncqa.org.
Pfizer Inc is committed to helping people improve their health by discovering and developing medicines, and informing consumers and health care providers about its medicines and the medical conditions they treat. Through multiple initiatives, Pfizer aims to ensure access to treatments and educate, empower, and motivate consumers to take the necessary steps to lead longer, healthier, happier lives. Pfizer medicines help more than 150 million people per year worldwide. The goal of Pfizer is to discover and develop innovative medicines, help make them available to patients, share health information, and partner on public health programs.
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