Integration of an evidence-based tobacco cessation program into a substance use disorders program to enhance equity of treatment access for northern, rural, and remote communities

Integrating tobacco cessation interventions into substance use disorder (SUD) programs is recommended, yet few are implemented into practice. This translational research implementation study was designed to integrate an evidence-based tobacco cessation intervention into a 2-week hospital outpatient SUD program that served a rural municipality and 33 remote Indigenous communities. Objectives included determining tobacco use prevalence, intervention uptake, and staffing resources required for intervention delivery. A series of 1-hr tobacco and health/well-being interactive education and behavior-change groups were developed for the SUD program to create a central access point to offer an evidence-based, intensive tobacco cessation intervention that included an initial counseling/planning session and nine post-SUD treatment follow-ups (weekly month 1; biweekly month 2; and 3, 6, and 12 months). Group sign-in data included age, gender, community, tobacco use, and interest in receiving tobacco cessation help. Thirty-two groups (April 2018 to February 2019) were attended by 105 people from 22 communities-56% were female, mean age = 30.9 (+/- 7.3; 93% <45 years), 86% smoked, and 38% enrolled in the intensive tobacco cessation intervention. The age-standardized tobacco use ratio was two times higher than would be expected in the general rural population in the region. Average staff time to provide the intervention was 1.5-2.5 hr/week. Results showed that a Healthy Living group integrated into SUD programming provided a forum for tobacco education, behavior-change skills development, and access to an intensive tobacco cessation intervention for which enrollment was high yet the intervention could be delivered with only a few staff hours a week.