Conclusion

Many young tobacco users in the United State have expressed the desire to quit, but with a quitting success rate of, at best, 14 percent, there is a clear and urgent need to provide more and better support to young people for cessation. In recognition of this need, the Youth Tobacco Cessation Collaborative was formed to address the common goal of ensuring access for every young tobacco user to appropriate and effective cessation interventions within the next ten years.

Meeting this need will require the engagement of stakeholders in all arenas (tobacco control, basic and biobehavioral research, policy- and decision-making, health care practice, community leadership, youth and the public). It will also require integrated, sustained efforts in: research on biobehavioral processes and effective interventions; implementation of programs, services, and interventions; and public support and demand for increased access to youth tobacco-use cessation programs and services. Collaboration across organizations, sectors, and domains will be essential to reach the goal within the next ten years.

The Collaborative has prepared this Blueprint to facilitate planning, discussion, and priority setting around the needs for youth tobacco-use cessation. The scope of the goals and objectives articulated herein are comprehensive, in that they reflect the combined interests of the Collaborative and the researchers and stakeholders who reviewed it, but they are not exhaustive. It is the Collaborative’s hope that this document will raise awareness of the urgency and complexity of this issue. For those not yet invested in tobacco cessation, this Blueprint may provide a guide for developing priorities and goals; for those already engaged in the issue, this may offer an opportunity to reflect on previous work, direct future work, and assess how best to interact with colleagues in the field.

We encourage you to contribute to the collaborative process, and to overall progress toward meeting the goals for youth cessation, by sharing your work with the Collaborative and with your colleagues in other disciplines or domains.