Overview

This blueprint was developed by the Youth Tobacco Cessation Collaborative, which represents a variety of public, private, and voluntary organizations that fund research and program activities related to youth tobacco use and cessation. (A list of participants is included as Appendix A.) The Blueprint was produced through a series of full-group discussions and smaller working group activities conducted from mid-1998 through the fall of 1999. The Collaborative deliberations were based on the outcomes of a youth tobacco-use-cessation conference sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the fall of 1997.

The intent of this document is to:

• Guide discussions within and among organizations addressing or planning to address funding research and/or programs related to youth tobacco-use cessation;
• Reflect common goals and objectives that have resulted from intensive discussions among its authors;
• Help ensure that funding plans and programs across varied organizations contribute to the strongest possible national efforts to support youth tobacco-use cessation;
• Help funding organizations to coordinate their efforts to achieve the overall goal of ensuring access to effective tobacco-use cessation interventions for every young tobacco user.

Overall, the Collaborative has identified serious gaps across the domains of research, implementation, and support and demand in: knowledge of most aspects of youth tobacco-use cessation; assessments of needs and opportunities; and standards, definitions, and performance criteria.

Each of the organizations concerned with increasing youth tobacco-use cessation has a different approach, and subsequently different priorities within the domains of research, implementation, and support and demand. In recognition of this, the Collaborative has outlined separate goals and strategies for each domain. The intent was not to delineate between them, but to acknowledge the important roles of each and permit more careful scrutiny of the contributions to be made to the ten year goal of developing a range of strategies to support and promote youth tobacco-use cessation. It is extremely important when considering the short-term goals and objectives to keep in mind the overlap that exists between the three domains, as it is ultimately necessary to coordinate the separate approaches in order to ensure that the sum of all actions contributes to moving the field toward the ten year goal. The Collaborative has developed a vision which describes the integration of these components into a comprehensive approach to supporting youth tobacco-use cessation (see Appendix B).

In reviewing research, the Collaborative had identified a need for the development of a basic infrastructure or framework to support youth tobacco-use cessation research and its translation into practice (including common taxonomy, standards of effectiveness, and practice guidelines). There is also a need to develop a prioritized research agenda. This agenda includes surveillance and basic research to increase our understanding of youth use, addiction, and experimentation, as well as applied research that will lead to the development and evaluation of a range of cessation interventions.

For implementation, needs include providing young tobacco users with access to more and better tobacco-use treatment programs and services, and building and supporting a stronger infrastructure for the delivery of these programs. Needs related to implementation also extend beyond treatment programs and services to include broader societal interventions and the integration of tobacco-use cessation services into related ongoing youth programs (e.g. comprehensive substance-abuse prevention programs).

To increase support and demand for youth tobacco-use cessation, there is a need for advocacy to initiate and maintain policies and environments that support quitting. There is also a need to increase support and involvement among health-care providers, decision-makers, and community gatekeepers, and to generate interest in tobacco-use cessation services among both youth and the general public.

Supporting Collaboration:
A key consideration in striving to reach the ten year goal of making tobacco-use cessation interventions available to youth is the role of interactions and shared influences among funders and other tobacco control leaders. The varied approaches, actions, and views of these stakeholders form a complicated mosaic, creating a vital need to support continued conversation and coordination amongst them. Examples of support for collaboration discussed within this group include:

• Establishing and sustaining cross-sharing between researchers and implementers;
• Sustaining team building and coordination across involved agencies and organizations;
• Tracking progress and building toward the short-term goals in an organized way.

Enhancing interaction in these ways requires

1. defining the hallmarks of effective networks and then building the required infrastructures and processes;
2. pinpointing ways in which youth tobacco control funders can best contribute (e.g. develop summaries of current knowledge or fund the work of others to do so); and
3. optimally sharing plans and progress across agencies.

Development of the capacity for collaboration among this Collaborative and others will ultimately necessitate the development of shareable, searchable, and up-to-date databases that summarize:

• recent and ongoing research;
• current research funding and funding mechanisms;
• available cessation and treatment programs and services;
• current policy and environmental initiatives;
• ongoing knowledge synthesis, planning efforts, and related functions of stakeholders.

The creation of one or more databases—and their linkages to each other—would enable the Collaborative to monitor levels of activity and document progress toward achieving the goals and objectives articulated in this Blueprint.