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Campaign
for Tobacco Free Kids
Organizational Summary
The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids (CTFK) works on tobacco
cessation issues at the federal, state and local level, in
the public and private sector, in an effort to ensure that
all tobacco users have access to evidence-based treatment
services either through improved health insurance coverage
or through other publicly funded (e.g., quitlines, websites)
or private initiatives.
While CTFK is not involved in the actual delivery of tobacco
cessation services, we do advocate for policies (and funding)
to increase access to those services. That activity involves
working on legislative and budgetary proposals in Congress
(e.g., working with our partners to secure $25 million for
CDC to help fund the national telephone quitline), working
in concert with other national, state and local organizations
(e.g., through the National Partnership to Help Pregnant Smokers
Quit) to improve coverage under Medicaid in each state, and
to begin reaching out to the private sector to raise awareness
about tobacco cessation and the benefits to employees and
to employers/purchasers/insurers of providing access to cessation
services.
Through CTFK’s ongoing advocacy and policy work around
increasing tobacco product excise taxes and securing passage
of smokefree workplace laws, more and more consumers of tobacco
are reducing their consumption of tobacco and increasing the
frequency and number of their quit attempts. Increasingly,
CTFK is working to ensure that new tax increases dedicate
a portion of those revenues to prevention funding, including
cessation services. In addition, CTFK has encouraged state
programs and coalitions that have adopted smokefree workplace
legislation to initiate, on a parallel track, programs to
help tobacco users quit that coincide with the implementation
of new smoking restrictions. In addition, CTFK continues to
work with state tobacco control coalitions to advocate for
increased funding from Master Settlement Agreement dollars
to pay for comprehensive tobacco control programs, including
tobacco cessation.
CTFK has been very active in policy-related activities around
Medicaid and cessation. At the national level, CTFK has worked
with our partners on legislative proposals to expand and improve
coverage of comprehensive, evidence-based cessation services
under the Medicaid program. At the state level, CTFK was intimately
involved in the development of a Medicaid cessation toolkit
that was produced and released (under the auspices of the
National Partnership to Help Pregnant Smokers Quit and the
Center for Tobacco Cessation) in the Spring of 2004 to every
State Medicaid Director, State Maternal and Child Health Director,
State Tobacco Control Program Manager, as well as to all state
tobacco control coalitions. In follow-up to the release of
these documents, CTFK has worked closely with several key
partners to provide technical assistance to several states
considering improvements/enhancements to their Medicaid coverage.
In fact, due directly to the toolkit, the State’s of
Pennsylvania and North Carolina recently adopted significant
improvements in their coverage of cessation services under
Medicaid.
On Medicare, in addition to supporting congressional efforts
to improve coverage of cessation services, CTFK took the lead
in organizing comments from over 50 leading public heath,
tobacco control, and scientific organizations (including the
American Legacy Foundation, American Medical Association,
and the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco) in support
of the National Coverage Determination Request for coverage
of tobacco cessation counseling services under Medicare Part
B (as proposed by Partnership for Prevention). It is expected
that a ruling on that request will be made prior to the end
of 2004.
In addition to CTFK’s policy and advocacy oriented
work on cessation, CTFK maintains close working relationships
with the academic and research community to ensure that we
are aware of the latest developments and advances in cessation
and to then bring any policy or legislative proposals in line
with the current evidence. Further, as a tool that has been
used by the scientific, provider and policy communities, CTFK
developed and continues to maintain the Quitting and Reducing
Tobacco Use Inventory of Products (QuiTIP) on-line, searchable
database that contains relevant information on nearly 100
different products sold in the United States and internationally
as cessation aids (see
https://secure.tobaccofreekids.org/Cessation/).
The database provides basic data to users, all in the words
of the manufacturer, on the ingredients in each product, directions
for use, warnings/disclaimers, as well as any health claims
on the label and/or any related website (the database also
contains images of every product). The database also contains
information on any relevant evidence indicating whether or
not the product is safe or effective and there are links to
key resources (mostly related to health claims and deceptive
and misleading advertising) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
CTFK’s goal is to work with all organizations engaged
on this issue and to work toward ensuring universal access
to tobacco cessation services for all tobacco users, regardless
of health insurance status. All the various blueprints, strategic
plans, toolkits and guidelines on cessation serve as excellent
resources and provide a roadmap for what we need to do - the
challenge now is to do it and to make it happen.
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