Helping Smokers Quit
Approximately 70% of smokers want to quit. Smokers are twice as likely to quit for good if they quit with help, such as nicotine replacement therapy, other medications, and counseling.
Smokers don't use help for many reasons:
- They may not know the benefits of quitting with help.
- Quit-smoking medications can be expensive, and many insurance plans don’t cover these products.
- Smokers may not know how to access free or low-cost counseling.
- They may have misperceptions about the harms of certain treatments.
Get Healthy Philly is promoting the benefits of quitting with help and making it easier and cheaper to get help.
Our Action Plan
- Promote Medicaid coverage for quit-smoking medications for 70,000 low-income smokers.
- Expand coverage for quit-smoking medications through employer-sponsored insurance.
- Provide one month of free nicotine patches and counseling to thousands of Philadelphia smokers annually through the PA Free Quitline.
- Promote aided quit attempts through a multi-media social marketing campaign.
- Support community-based quit-smoking programs for vulnerable populations.
- Implement a public health detailing program to improve the ability of primary care providers to help their patients quit smoking.
- Explore, via the Board of Health, a regulation requiring tobacco retailers to post point-of-purchase warnings about the harms of tobacco use.
2011-12 Achievements
- Worked with the five Medicaid managed care organizations to expand coverage for quit-smoking medications for low-income smokers and expanded coverage for City of Philadelphia employees.
- Implemented the second annual giveaway of nicotine patches to 5,000 Philadelphia smokers via the PA Free Quitline. Data from the first year’s giveaway showed that 1 in 3 participants were smoke-free up to six months after the giveaway period!
- Multi-media cessation campaign (Quit with help. Quit for good.) was seen or heard 24 million times in 16 months. The campaign increased quit attempts and use of NRT among smokers exposed to it.
- Our public health detailing program reached out to nearly 400 physicians' offices to improve how clinicians counsel and treat their patients to quit smoking.
2011-2012 Annual Report
Resources
- Medicaid cessation fact sheet for health care providers
- Quit Smoking Informational Flyer
- Determined to Quit (PA Quit Line) – 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669)
- Become an Ex
Find Out More
For more information, visit SmokeFree Philly or call 311.
