Smoking cessation: a community-based approach to continuing medical education

Continuing medical education can help close the gaps between current and desired tobacco cessation practices. This paper reports a case of an innovative community-based continuing education approach implemented by a multi-organizational initiative aimed at increasing smoking cessation rates among adults in the USA. The approach involved collaborative partnerships with healthcare professionals and other stakeholders in 14 communities where smoking cessation was an established priority. The centralized evidence-based educational curriculum was delivered locally to more than 15,600 clinicians. Evaluation provided evidence of positive impact on clinicians, healthcare systems, and communities. A collaborative, community-based approach to continuing medical education has potential to increase tobacco cessation rates by leveraging efforts of multiple stakeholders operating at the community level into more effective and sustainable tobacco cessation projects. Future research is needed to study effectiveness of and appropriate evaluation frameworks for this approach.