This proposed cancer education training project is designed to train oncology care providers to implement tobacco use assessment and treatment (TUAT) skills in their cancer care settings. Approximately 10-30% of cancer patients are current smokers at diagnosis and approximately 70% of patients who are current smokers at the time of diagnosis will continue smoking following their diagnosis. Persistent smoking is associated with cancer-specific and all-cause mortality, increased likelihood for second primary cancer, increased risk for disease recurrence, poor response to treatment and treatment-related toxicity. Given the evidence that persistent smoking is associated with adverse clinical outcomes, several leading oncology organizations have strongly endorsed TUAT delivery as an important metric for high quality cancer care. Unfortunately, adoption of TUAT into real world practice settings has been slow and uncommon. Whereas most recent surveys demonstrate that oncology providers agree that promoting tobacco cessation is important, most cancer care settings have not yet established tobacco cessation treatment as standard care, and lack of training and implementation support have been identified as needed for TUAT practice innovation in cancer research and care. Therefore, to address this significant research-to-practice gap, the overall purpose of this cancer education grant is to develop, implement and evaluate a short-term TUAT skills development workshop and collaborative training initiative that will train and provide technical assistance for oncology clinicians to deliver TUAT for tobacco-dependent patients. The proposed skills development effort will be enacted during a short- term period of training engagement commencing with a 2-day onsite workshop followed by six monthly videoconferences co-facilitated by Program Faculty with relevant TUAT expertise in cancer. The proposed skills development course will be delivered to eight successive cohorts of oncology care providers. The five- year cancer education program will train 25-50 new participants per year from diverse cancer practice settings with a total reach of 200 multidisciplinary participants.
Specific aims are to: 1) Develop, disseminate and seek participant evaluation of a Tobacco Treatment Training-Oncology (TTT-O) education program consisting of in- person workshops and web-based, collaborative learning activities (Collaboratory) for multidisciplinary cancer care provider participants from diverse cancer practice settings; 2) Evaluate the impact of the TTT-O Workshop and Collaboratory on participants' TUAT knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy and skills and 3) Evaluate the impact of participating in the TTT-O Workshop and Collaboratory on delivery and implementation of TUAT in participants' cancer care settings. The overarching goal of this cancer education program is to train oncology care providers to implement clinical practice guidelines for TUAT in order to reduce tobacco-related morbidity and mortality among cancer patients and survivors.
The purpose of the proposed cancer education training project is to train oncology care providers to implement tobacco use assessment and treatment (TUAT) in their cancer care settings. This is important because approximately 10-30% of cancer patients are smokers when diagnosed, and approximately 70% of those diagnosed patients will continue to smoke after their diagnosis. This project will develop, implement and evaluate a skills development course and collaborative training initiative that will train and provide consultation to oncology care providers to improve TUAT delivery and implementation at their respective institutions.
