Strategies may include educating community leaders and engaging them in health promotion and tobacco control policy-related activities. Programs also offer smoking cessation and relapse prevention services to youth partiipants to prevent or interrupt habituated use . Institutional Casefinding Programs implement models designed by health and human service providers to identify smokers with in their existing client or patient population and institutionalize an intervention strategy. Building a tobacco control movement in Massachusetts requires a highly collaborative network of programs. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health organized the state into six geographically defined regions.
Networks facilitate communication within region as well as across agency and program boundaries.
Regional meetings, convened monthly by the MTCP Regional Field Director, are conducted in both large and small group formats organized by geographic sub-areas or by provider type. Each regional network is guided by a Steering Committee. Steering Committees work on goal alignment, strategic planning, and regional public relations campaigns and quality improvement. The regional structure provides an ideal backdrop for undertaking large and complex projects with multiple participants. Projects are designed and implemented across both modalities and regions and engage partners outside of the MTCP system.