Feast and Famine: Ensuring sustainable solutions for tobacco cessation quitlines

Audience: Tobacco control advocates, quitline funders and administrators, state Medicaid staff, health plans, and others interested in working with quitlines.

Key Points: Historically, the number of smokers that a quitline can help has been limited by its budget. Recently, states have begun implementing new strategies to alleviate the tension between shrinking state tobacco control budgets and the growing demand for more quitline services due to national initiatives and promotions. Two central strategies have emerged to address quitline sustainability: Medicaid reimbursement for quitline services, and developing public-private partnerships which yield private funding to support the state quitline. The North American Quitline Consortium has been focusing its efforts to assist quitlines with both strategies.

Educational Experience: The panel will present data on quitline funding trends from 2005-2011, highlighting the necessity of quitline sustainability. The second portion of the panel will present two of the most effective strategies for working with state Medicaid offices to obtain the 50% federal funding match for quitline services, and for increasing consumer demand for cessation services, from NAQC’s Medicaid learning community. The final portion will present findings from NAQC’s work providing technical assistance to states for developing public-private partnerships. Specifically, presenters will discuss how states can engage commercial health plans in covering quit line costs for their members ,  identify effective  cost-sharing models and outline some of the opportunities that exist as a result of healthcare reform.

Benefits: Participants will be able to directly apply the strategies described in their work to improve sustainability of quitlines.