Tobacco Cessation course expands medication benefits to civilians

  • Published
  • By Capt. Geoff Buteau
  • 66th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. --  Air Force Materiel Command has been making anti-tobacco medication available to civilians through their Health and Wellness Centers' tobacco cessation classes since March, but the Hanscom HAWC has had very limited enrollment in the classes. 

"We'd like to see as many people as possible taking advantage of the free medication," said Will Carpenter, health promotion manager at the HAWC, "but if no one uses this, AFMC is likely not to give us any money for the meds next year." 

The tobacco cessation class, including the medications, has been available for military for as long as the HAWC has been in operation, according to Mr. Carpenter. Civilians have always come, he said, "but they've been missing that key element of the prescription, which really dropped their success rates." 

The discrepancy in the availability of medications for military members but not for civilians existed in the differences in health providers. Traditionally, if the military member wanted to stop smoking with the help of medication, the military health provider would prescribe the meds on the condition they attend the tobacco cessation classes at the HAWC. The communication, requirements, and prescriptions were relatively seamless. Since civilians have health providers all over the region with different insurance programs provided by different entities, prescribing meds through the military health system and military health funds is nearly impossible, Mr. Carpenter said. 

"We now have a process in place where we can give a pretty quick turnaround to civilians," he said. Health providers relish the opportunity to prescribe anti-tobacco medications because it's a sign their patients are taking the initiative to make overall better health decisions. So, Mr. Carpenter said, once a civilian receives a prescription via fax and brings it to the first class, they can get started on the meds, courtesy of AFMC.
AFMC's ability to fund these meds for civilians came out of a conference Mr. Carpenter and other health promotion providers attended two years ago. "We found out there was money from the government that, simply put, allowed us to buy civilians medications," he said. 

AFMC started the process for obtaining the money after the conference, and by December had a formal request for the funds. After receiving the funds and the meds in March, "Now all we have to do is get you to show up," Mr. Carpenter said. 

The class is made up of four sessions, each with a different theme. Attendees have to attend three out of four sessions to pass. Subject-matter experts teach some of the classes, including a mental health counselor for the first class to talk about stress management and getting control of the external factors that trigger people to use tobacco and a dental hygienist to show the class the physical damage tobacco can cause to the mouth, throat and lungs. 

The third and fourth sessions deal more with the stressors and scenarios that cause people to relapse into tobacco use. "We look ahead and start planning for instances when they're not here at the HAWC, when they're out there in daily life, and preventing them from getting back into bad habits," Mr. Carpenter said. 

The goal of the class is to help people live longer, healthier and happier lives, and not to make quotas or record the distribution numbers of medications, Mr. Carpenter said. "We're here for the people; we'll do follow ups, we check on you 30 days later; we check on you three and six months later." 

With new medications available for military and civilians now, there really is no reason to wait, which is something Mr. Carpenter sees a lot: people putting off this opportunity for a better life until it's convenient. To that, he says, "Why wait until January 1 to make a New Year's Resolution; you can make it now and be done long before then."