133

Appendix B: 

Program and Policy Recommendations for 

Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs 

Guide to Community 

Preventive Services: What 

Works to Promote Health? 

The Task Force on Community Preventive Service’s report, The Guide to Community Preventive 

Services: What Works to Promote Health?, provides a list of effective tobacco prevention and 

control interventions that states and communities can implement to reduce tobacco use 

and exposure to secondhand smoke.1 Tobacco 

control programs and their partners can 

compare their existing activities with these recommendations, take steps to ensure that these 

interventions are adequately implemented and 

funded, and consider additional interventions, 

with the ultimate goal of building and sustaining a comprehensive tobacco control program. 

On the basis of evidence of effectiveness 

documented in the scientific literature, the Task 

Force’s report supports the following populationbased tobacco prevention and control interventions. 

 Clean indoor air legislation prohibiting tobacco 

use in indoor public and private workplaces.

 Federal, state, and local efforts to increase tobacco 

product excise taxes as an effective public health 

intervention to promote tobacco use cessation and 

to reduce the initiation of tobacco use among youth.

 Funding and implementing long-term, highintensity, mass-media campaigns using 

paid broadcast times and media messages 

developed through formative research.

 Proactive telephone cessation support 

services (quitlines).

 Reduced or eliminated copayments 

for effective cessation therapies.

 Reminder systems for health care providers. 

 Combinations of efforts to mobilize communities 

to identify and reduce the commercial 

availability of tobacco products to youth.

Population-Based Tobacco Prevention and Control Interventions 

The recommendations from the Task Force 

confirm the importance of coordinated or combined 

interventions for tobacco control and prevention. 

The evidence supporting the effectiveness of 

efforts to reduce tobacco use among youth through 

access restrictions, to institute mass-reach health 

communication campaigns, and to assist tobacco 

users to quit via telephone quitlines comes 

primarily from studies that implemented these 

interventions in combination with other strategies. 
134

Appendix B: Program and Policy Recommendations

 TU-1—Reduce tobacco use by adults.

 TU-2—Reduce tobacco use by adolescents.

 TU-3—Reduce the initiation of tobacco use among children, adolescents, and young adults.

 TU-4—Increase smoking cessation attempts by adult smokers.

 TU-5—Increase recent smoking cessation success by adult smokers.

 TU-6—Increase smoking cessation during pregnancy.

 TU-7—Increase smoking cessation attempts by adolescent smokers. 

 TU-8—Increase comprehensive Medicaid insurance coverage of evidence-based treatment for nicotine 

dependency in states and the District of Columbia.

 TU-9—Increase tobacco screening in health care settings. 

 TU-10—Increase tobacco cessation counseling in health care settings. 

 TU-11—Reduce the proportion of nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke.

 TU-12—Increase the proportion of persons covered by indoor worksite policies that prohibit smoking.

 TU-13—Establish laws in states, the District of Columbia, territories, and tribes on smokefree indoor air that 

prohibit smoking in public places and worksites.

 TU-14—Increase the proportion of smokefree homes.

 TU-15—Increase tobacco-free environments in schools, including all school facilities, property, vehicles, 

and school events.

 TU-16—Eliminate state laws that preempt stronger local tobacco control laws.

 TU-17—Increase the Federal and State tax on tobacco products.

 TU-18—Reduce the proportion of adolescents and young adults in grades 6–12 who are exposed to 

tobacco marketing.

 TU-19—Reduce the illegal sales rate to minors through enforcement of laws prohibiting 

the sale of tobacco products to minors.

 TU-20—(Developmental) Increase the number of states and the District of Columbia, territories, and tribes with 

sustainable and comprehensive evidence-based tobacco control programs.

Tobacco Use 

Health Systems Change 

Social and Environmental Changes 

Healthy People 2020

The Healthy People initiative provides sciencebased, national objectives for improving the 

health of all Americans.2 For three decades, 

Healthy People has established benchmarks 

and monitored progress over time in order to 

encourage collaborations across communities 

and sectors, empower individuals toward 

making informed health decisions, and measure the impact of prevention activities. 

Healthy People 2020 was launched in 2010 

and includes an ambitious, yet achievable, 10-year 

agenda for improving the nation’s health. The 

national health objectives related to tobacco 

prevention and control are noted below.3
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Appendix B: Program and Policy Recommendations

References

1. Zaza S, Briss PA, Harris KW, editors. The Guide to 

Community Preventive Services: What Works to Promote 

Health? New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 

2. U.S. Department of Health and Human 

Services. About Healthy People; <http://

www.healthypeople.gov/2020/about/default.

aspx>; accessed: December 2, 2013.

3. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

Healthy People 2020 Objectives; <http://www.

healthypeople.gov/2020/topicsobjectives2020/

default.aspx>; accessed December 2, 2013.