Abstract

Tobacco use is projected to kill 1 billion people in the 21st century. Tobacco Use Disorder (TUD) is one of the most common substance use disorders in the world. Evidence-based treatment of TUD is effective, but treatment accessibility remains very low. A dearth of specially trained clinicians is a significant barrier to treatment accessibility, even within systems of care that implement brief intervention models. The treatment of TUD is becoming more complex and tailoring treatment to address new and traditional tobacco products is needed. The Council for Tobacco Treatment Training Programs (Council) is the accrediting body for Tobacco Treatment Specialist (TTS) training programs. Between 2016 and 2019, n = 7761 trainees completed Council-accredited TTS training programs. Trainees were primarily from North America (92.6%) and the Eastern Mediterranean (6.1%) and were trained via in-person group workshops in medical and academic settings. From 2016 to 2019, the number of Council-accredited training programs increased from 14 to 22 and annual number of trainees increased by 28.5%. Trainees have diverse professional backgrounds and work in diverse settings but were primarily White (69.1%) and female (78.7%) located in North America. Nearly two-thirds intended to implement tobacco treatment services in their setting; two-thirds had been providing tobacco treatment for 1 year or less; and 20% were sent to training by their employers. These findings suggest that the training programs are contributing to the development of a new workforce of TTSs as well as the development of new programmatic tobacco treatment services in diverse settings. Developing strategies to support attendance from demographically and geographically diverse professionals might increase the proportion of trainees from marginalized groups and regions of the world with significant tobacco-related inequities.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2-2021

Notes/Citation Information

Published in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, v. 18, issue 5, 2416.

© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Due to the large number of authors, only the first 20 authors are listed in the author section above. For the complete list of authors, please download this article or visit: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18052416

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18052416

Funding Information

This work was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute (R25CA233416).

Related Content

The data presented in this study are available on request and agreement with the Council for Tobacco Treatment Training Programs, Inc. The data are not publicly available but accessible with the appropriate data use agreement with the Council. Data requests should be made by e-mail.

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