Tobacco Cessation: Let The Games Begin!
Creators: name: Hill, Shayna
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2014

description: Abstract: Tobacco use in the United States has been identified as the number one cause of avoidable illness and death in the United States. Over 440,000 Americans die each year as a result of tobacco use. And, studies have shown that people with serious mental illness or drug addiction smoke almost half of the cigarettes consumed in the United States. Clearly there is a need to help raise awareness about the dangers of tobacco use among this population. Unfortunately, studies have also shown that this population is not terribly motivated to stop using tobacco, tobacco use tends to be chronic, and quit attempts are fraught with multiple relapses. R.J. Blackley, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Center (ADATC), a mental health and drug addiction treatment center located in Butner, North Carolina was scheduled to become a tobacco-free campus on July 1st, 2014. In order to help facilitate the tobacco-free go live date of July 1st, a schedule of tobacco awareness classes was created and a team of facilitators was formed. The curriculum chosen was the Breathe Easy Live Well program developed by the North Carolina Evidence Based Practice Center. It is out of this pilot program that the applied theater games curriculum enhancement program proposal grew. In order to increase attendance and patient engagement in a very resistant population, a program proposal to pair lesson specific theater games with each lesson of the Breathe Easy Live Well curriculum is suggested. This proposal is based on the teachings of Viola Spolin and Augusto Boal and bolstered by the more recent theories on education and learning by Sandra Russ. The results of this proposal are a program plan and evaluation plan designed to establish a training, facilitation and evaluation team responsible for creating a program guidebook, and evaluation tools used in training, facilitating and evaluating the tobacco cessation group sessions. The target audience for this plan is the tobacco using in-patient population in a mental health and alcohol and drug abuse treatment center similar to the one at R.J. Blackley ADATC in Butner, North Carolina, where this project was piloted. The objectives of the plan are to increase the total number of participants in the tobacco cessation group sessions to 80% of the total number of smoking patients at any given time, increase awareness about tobacco cessation options while in the facility and after discharge, increase the number of patients who complete 80% of the classes (12 out of 15) and to show a graduation from earlier stages of change among participants as defined in the Transtheoretical Model such as from Precontemplation to Contemplation or from Contemplation to Preparation using intake and discharge surveys. The program proposal has now undergone some pilot testing with promising results. With time and further development it is possible that this program proposal could show the same promise in other facilities across the country. It is also possible to expand this program proposal to include other types of addiction treatments such as the opiate, cocaine or alcohol treatments.