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Many people make New Year’s resolutions to live a healthier lifestyle. If you use commercial tobacco products, such as cigarettes, cigars, and chewing tobacco among others, quitting tobacco (or helping someone quit tobacco) may be on your list of New Year’s resolutions. Stopping tobacco use has many health benefits, including lower risks for many types of cancer and cardiovascular diseases (e.g., stroke, heart diseases), and longer life expectancy. However, changing behaviors is hard. Here is a short guide to help achieve your New Year’s resolution to quit tobacco products.

All commercial tobacco products are harmful

The harms of cigarette smoking, as well as smokeless tobacco use, are well documented. Cigar use is also harmful and particularly common among Blacks in the United States. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded that e-cigarette use likewise poses health risks.

Some cigarette smokers try to quit smoking by switching from cigarettes to products that they believe to be less harmful than cigarettes. However, no studies to date have shown that such a strategy is effective in quitting cigarette smoking. So, it is important for your health to stop using all commercial tobacco products.

Find your allies

Many tobacco users try to quit tobacco “cold turkey”; that is, they stop using tobacco abruptly without using any cessation aids. It is true that people can quit tobacco solely with willpower, just like people can multiply 5-digit numbers in their head. As calculators make math easier for us, cessation aids, including nicotine gums and patches, prescription medications, and support programs, will make quitting tobacco easier. Unfortunately, compared with non-Hispanic White smokers, minority smokers are less likely to use these cessation aids. Try them out and find the right one that works for you! Smoking cessation support programs are available for free at https://smokefree.gov/. 

Read more on NIMHD.gov.

A new faith-based program called Cempa Talks is launching in Chattanooga service provider Cempa Community Care to address HIV disparities among the African-American and Latino communities.

Cempa Talks will include a youth ambassador program as well as symposia held in houses of worship, ministries and youth groups across urban Chattanooga.  The goal is to raise awareness and education about HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and to lower rates of transmission.

Reaching minority communities in the city is important because more than 55 percent of people living with HIV in Chattanooga are African American. Overall in the United States, African Americans represent 12 to 13 percent of the population and account for 44 percent of all HIV diagnoses. In Tennessee, they make up 16 percent of the population but account for 56 percent of all HIV diagnoses, according to data from the state health department.

“With various disparities existing across the state of Tennessee, the Tennessee Department of Health’s Office of Minority Health and Disparities Elimination [OMHDE] work to ensure that we are intentional in our efforts to address those with the greatest need,” said Monique Anthony, director of OMHDE, in the newspaper article. “To protect, promote and improve the health and prosperity of people in Tennessee is our mission. It is our goal to empower communities to support optimal health for all and to eliminate disparities for racial, ethnic and underserved populations. The OMHDE Community and Faith-Based Health Disparities grant is one strategy to build the capacity of our partners and ensure their voices are heard.”

Read more on POZ.com.

With an estimated 115 people dying each day from opioid abuse, the issue has become an epidemic, drawing attention from the White House, Congress, law enforcement and the healthcare industry. To address the crisis, healthcare providers are looking to treatment plans that integrate addiction control with behavioral and psychiatric care, and using platforms that not only span populations but can provide personalized care.

In applying mHealth and telehealth technology to addiction treatment, healthcare providers are looking to create a digital profile of the patient. While traditional treatment plans have focused on group therapy and care in the doctor’s office, connected health platforms enable providers to work with the patient at any time and place, and to see what the patient goes through each day.

“We’re building a panoramic view of your life,” says Jacob Levenson, CEO of MAP Health Management, an Austin, Texas-based, nationwide network of close to 100 addiction treatment providers that has adopted digital health tools for care management and coordination. The idea, he says, is to give providers insight into what triggers a patient’s behaviors, and to create treatment plans that address those triggers and prevent relapses.

Applying Connected Care Solutions to a National Crisis

Healthcare providers are finding many different uses for connected care in the substance abuse space. Examples include:

• mHealth apps that give users access to coping skills and care resources, peer support and on-demand access to caregivers in times of crisis
• Digital messaging platforms that allow care providers,  family members, or peer support group members to deliver timely messages of support
• Mobile health units, deployed to urban neighborhoods, rural communities and even high-traffic areas like schools, prisons and retail centers, that essentially bring the doctor’s office to patients with access issues
• Telemedicine and telehealth platforms that enable patients to engage in virtual visits with their care provider or a mental health specialist from the comfort and anonymity of their own home
• Telemedicine platforms that enable rural providers and those dealing with high-impact populations to collaborate with substance abuse experts and mental health experts on the latest treatments, as well as to talk about difficult cases or chat with peers
• mHealth wearables that monitor a user’s vital signs and issue alerts – to the user and/or the user’s care team – at times of stress
• Apps and wearables that measure medication adherence in medication assisted treatment (MAT) programs
• mHealth devices (including patches, ingestibles and wearables) that can deliver timed doses of medication to help users manage pain or stressful situations

“Collaboration among multiple providers and organizations that address the public health issues associated with opioid abuse are crucial,” The Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) reported in a December 2017 article. “When diagnosing and treating opioid abuse, skilled practitioners (located remotely) can provide an array of integrated patient services using telehealth technology.”

“Through telehealth, participants can receive needed treatment by accessing expert help without current barriers, receive needed medications, be taught new skills to prevent relapse, and make important connections with others with healthcare system change,” the article added.

Read more on mHealthIntelligence.com

State policymakers increasingly recognize the need to address the social determinants of health — housing, employment, education, and income — to reduce health care costs and improve population health. Educational attainment, for example, provides dividends for overall health. People with higher levels of education generally live longer and experience healthier lives.

The quality of education a student receives impacts educational attainment and overall health. Evidence shows the overrepresentation of certain groups of students in separate classrooms or other settings of poorer quality overwhelmingly affects students of color. Teachers have identified students of color as having disabilities at higher rates than white students, with research documenting racial bias as influencing their decisions to remove students from the classroom. Students removed from mainstream education settings are less likely to make progress, build skills, and/or return to general educational settings. Black and Latino students are more likely to be affected by disproportionality.

States are uniquely positioned to promote the mental health and educational achievement of all children by addressing the mechanisms that underlie racial and ethnic differences in mental disorder onset and persistence, and the causes and consequences of disproportionality in out-of-regular classroom settings, such as resource rooms, separate schools, or separate facilities. Using the resources of a variety of agencies, including public health, Medicaid, mental health, and education, can address disproportionality. Drawing from interviews with state officials conducted in conjunction with Massachusetts General Hospital’s Disparities Research Unit, the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) identified state policy levers and programs, including mental health consultation, data sharing, convening authority, systemic interventions and supports, that states can use to eliminate mental health disparities.

Read more on NASHP.org.

In order to highlight pockets of excellence across the country, the NNED selects an organization to highlight once a month. Reality House, Inc. has been selected as the Partner of the Month for January in recognition of National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week (last week in January).

Reality House, Inc. is a community-based Not-For-Profit Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS) certified medically supervised outpatient chemical dependency treatment facility that provides culturally-appropriate substance abuse and HIV treatment and prevention services to New Yorkers.

Reality House has transformed to include effective treatment services for veterans, their families, and communities along the lines of cultural competence and social justice.

Their new facilities in Astoria, Queens consists of 30 bed veterans residence and a medically supervised outpatient chemical dependency treatment program for the general population as well as veterans.

Services offered by Reality House include:

• Group and Individual Substance Abuse Treatment
• Relapse Prevention
• Violence Prevention
• Supportive Services
• Criminal Justice Services
• Re-Socialization

Additionally, Reality House has many services catering specifically to veterans including:

• Individual and group counseling to explore the ramifications of substance abuse associated with combat trauma
• Identifying Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) issues
• Identifying Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
• Vocational rehabilitative services including guidance in career planning
  
• Family therapy
• Employment and Housing Assistance
• Domestic Violence issues

Learn more about Reality House’s dedication to assisting individuals, families, and communities to lead productive and positive lifestyles and achieve higher levels of accomplishments.

View a list of previous NNED Partners of the Month here.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration invites National Network to Eliminate Disparities in Behavioral Health (NNED) members to participate in its ninth annual training opportunity for community-based organizations, NNEDLearn 2019.  The goal of NNEDLearn is to develop members’ skills in evidence-supported and culturally appropriate mental illness and substance use prevention and treatment practices and to support practice implementation. This training model includes two introductory webinars, an on-site 2 ½ day intensive training, and four follow-up virtual coaching sessions. The on-site training will be held March 31 – April 3, 2019 at the Tamaya Hyatt in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico.

Applications to participate in NNEDLearn 2019 are now available on the NNED website. Use the NNEDLearn 2019 Pre-Application Decision Tree to see if your organization is ready to apply. Click here to apply for one of the training tracks now! The deadline to apply has been extended to Wednesday, January 16, 2019 at 5:00 pm Pacific Time. 

We encourage those who are not already NNED members to join the NNED (it’s free!) and become part of this virtual network of peers and take advantage of resources and opportunities like NNEDLearn.