Introducing the NHS Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training. Your smoking cessation career starts here!

It's almost Pythonesque, the numbers of people who are being trained specifically to stop others from smoking with (or without) the use of drugs.

As mentioned at the beginning of the year the UK National Smoking Cessation Conference takes place in June, this year in London. I described in then as a trade conference, but it is even more serious than that. It's a training agency, aiming to train and give certification to people who want to develop competence in their role of smoking cessation advisers/practitioners.

Behind the UKNSCC however looms another organisation, National Centre for Smoking Cessation Training (NCSCT), created from a winning bid by a consortium led by University College London to provide an accreditation system for smoking cessation advisers. (Is this what Tony Blair meant all those years ago by 'Education, Education, Education'?)

The organisation does have an 'ethical policy', which shows its main players have 'interests which might have a bearing on the independence of their judgement in relation to their work for the NCSCT': namely that they have received hospitality from Pfizer (manufacturer of Champix), or the Department of Health.

Here is their quarterly report for April to June 2010, which includes the news that 'On the 27th May 2010 the NCSCT was officially informed that it is now an ISO 9001 certified organisation (certificate number: FS 559421)'. Well, that's also reassuring. As is the long list of links.

Transatlantic allies offer full accreditation for smoking cessation-related activities across the pond (supported by Pfizer). Isn't it nice that we'll soon have as many words for smoking cessation as the eskimos have for snow?

Book here for the conference in London. You'll probably get a refund from your employer, and maybe something for accommodation (it's only London after all!)

American public health charity calls for moderation in tobacco education

Although the USA largely subscribes to the idea that passive smoking kills, the American Council on Science and Health (like Michael Siegel) criticises more extreme claims made by other public health bodies. It takes the following example (which also typifies the kind of claim often criticised by Michael Siegel), claiming that it risks rendering all tobacco education too incredible to be taken seriously.

The report states, “[T]here is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke and that smoke causes damage immediately to the cardiovascular system. Even low levels of tobacco exposure lead to disease and death, including heart attack, stroke, weakened immune system, and asthma attacks.” 

 “Has the Lung Association damaged its credibility in making such a dramatic, unqualified assertion?” asks Dr Elizabeth Whelan of ACSH, not for the first time. This body does not shrink from criticising the Surgeon General's report, which includes similar claims about secondary smoke, and calls for a zero tolerance policy towards tobacco smoke:

Upon reading this statement, ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross is left wondering whether basic toxicology and cancer-causation principles were considered in the drafting of the Surgeon General report. “Whether indirect exposure to tobacco smoke leads to disease is a matter of dose — the amount of smoke it takes to trigger adverse health outcomes such as heart disease or cancer — but the question of dose-response and exposure levels never made it into the report.” 

ACSH stops short of recommending spending much time exposed to tobacco smoke, but their suggestion to observe dose:reponse principles could be well observed by other bodies, especially in the United States, where they take the concept of third hand smoke seriously. University of Berkeley, California, scientists have pretty much dispensed with any such principles in their study of third hand smoke, as tobacco researcher and author Chris Snowdon writes here.

Noting that ASH Scotland has managed to set up an anti-smoking conference offering Learning Outcomes in (for want of a better expression) anti-smoking propaganda, I wonder how long before Scottish National Certificate qualifications are issued in Junk Science for being able to describe the damage to children from third hand smoke? What an outcome that would be for a small country with a proud educational record.

Or perhaps we will start to take science seriously again instead!

How attending free anti-smoking conference will get you points

Source, Learning outcomes link at this page.


Learning Outcomes for Smokefree Homes and Cars
With NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework below

Participants will:
1. develop their knowledge base around the harm caused by second-hand tobacco smoke inhalation
2. understand the part that smokefree homes initiatives play in Scotland’s tobacco control strategy
3. appreciate the progress made to date in changing public attitudes towards smoking in the presence of children
4. be able to describe several initiatives underway outside their own health board area to address second-hand  smoking in homes and cars
5. be able to describe some of the most recent findings regarding the harm caused by second-hand smoke exposure
6. be able to articulate the benefits of working in a multi-agency partnership to address passive smoke exposure in the home
7. recognise the challenges associated with addressing resistance to implementing smokefree homes, both within organisations which could provide support and within the community
8. feel more confident in advocating within their organisation or community for support for smokefree homes initiatives
9. be aware of training available to address smoking in the home
10. Additionally, those participants who undertake brief advice training on the day of the event will: feel more confident about giving brief advice to those considering making their home smokefree.


Knowledge Skills Framework (KSF) outlines:  Learning Outcomes for Smokefree Homes and Cars Conference
Learning outcomes 1 – 9 have the potential to provide evidence for application of the following KSF
Core C1 Communication                         Level 2
Core C2 Personal & People Development Level 2
Core C3 Health, Safety & Security
Core C4 Service Improvement                 Level 2
Core C5 Quality
Core C6 Equality & Diversity
Health & Wellbeing 1                                 Level 2


Learning Outcome 10 adds in the following HWB3 level 2 
Health & Wellbeing 3                                 Level 2
For the competencies for public health practice:
Area 1: Professional and ethical practice 
4: Continually develop and improve own and others’ practice in public health
Area 2: Technical competencies in public health practice
8. Identify risks to health, wellbeing and safety, providing advice on how to prevent, ameliorate or control them – demonstrating:

• knowledge of the risks to health, wellbeing and safety relevant to own area of work and of the varying scale of risk
• knowledge of the different approaches to preventing risks and how to communicate risk to different audiences.

Area 3: Application of technical competencies to public health work
9. Work collaboratively to plan and/or deliver programmes to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for populations/communities/groups/families/individuals

This work was funded £500,000 by the Big Lottery: a grant over half the value of ASH Scotland's core government grant last year. The project is called Refresh. NHS Scotland funding has ensured that attendance at the conference can be free

Fifteen years ago I worked in a key government department on drug misuse based in St Andrews Square. I was employed for a single year as casual Administrative Assistant. There were two Administrative Officers, an Executive Officer and two Administrative Assistants with a typing pool of three shared with other divisions, and the division heads totalling no more than nine or ten. ASH Scotland has approaching 30 staff on its payroll (another Word document sets them out from 'about us' (ASH Scotland organisation chart). I have no idea of the size of the drug misuse division now but it is extraordinary to find a government-funded charity fighting tobacco use with over three times as many staff as a government division on drug misuse.