Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center and Global Bridges are hosting a Global Tobacco Dependence Treatment Summit which takes place today and tomorrow at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
This Summit will bring together world leaders in tobacco dependence treatment, an extraordinary faculty, international and national grant awardees, and healthcare professionals working with tobacco dependent patients. The summit will highlight the critical role that effective tobacco dependence treatment (TDT) plays in national and international tobacco control efforts, showcase successful TDT capacity building/training programs and inspire participants to build local treatment capacity.
Unless action is taken, tobacco use will kill 1 billion people this century. Six years since the adoption of World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines calling for integration of cessation treatment into tobacco control, only 12 percent of countries have developed comprehensive treatment services. Even so, there are many simple steps healthcare professionals can take to improve patients’ chances of quitting, including refraining from tobacco use themselves, identifying tobacco users at intake and offering brief advice. The Global Tobacco Dependence Treatment Summit will address culturally relevant strategies for treatment and the impact of healthcare professional advocacy on international tobacco control.
“Helping people quit tobacco saves lives. As healthcare professionals, we have a moral responsibility to patients around the world to make tobacco dependence treatment available, accessible and culturally sensitive,” said J. Taylor Hays, M.D., director of the Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center and chair of Global Bridges. “People who want to quit need to know providers are there for them at every step of the journey toward living free from tobacco.”
