Continuing medical education can help close the gaps between current and desired tobacco cessation practices. This paper reports a case of an innovative community-based continuing education approach implemented by a multi-organizational initiative aimed at increasing smoking cessation rates among adults in the USA. The approach involved collaborative partnerships with healthcare professionals and other stakeholders in 14 communities where smoking cessation was an established priority. The centralized evidence-based educational curriculum was delivered locally to more than 15,600 clinicians. Evaluation provided evidence of positive impact on clinicians, healthcare systems, and communities. A collaborative, community-based approach to continuing medical education has potential to increase tobacco cessation rates by leveraging efforts of multiple stakeholders operating at the community level into more effective and sustainable tobacco cessation projects. Future research is needed to study effectiveness of and appropriate evaluation frameworks for this approach.

©2011 Carden Jennings Publishing Co., Ltd. Correspondence: Adele B. Cohen, MS, Senior Vice President for Grants and Operations, Physicians’ Institute for Excellence in Medicine, 1849 The Exchange, Atlanta, GA 30339 USA; 678-303-9287; fax: 888-290-7436 (e-mail: acohen@mag.org). IntroductIon In 2009, the University of Arizona HealthCare Partnership received a grant to provide education toward improvement in the treatment of nicotine addiction through the Physicians’ Institute for Excellence in Medicine. The Physicians’ Institute (a nonprofit subsidiary of the Medical Association of Georgia) is a partner in the Cease Smoking Today (CS2Day) initiative. CS2Day is a multi-organizational education initiative designed to provide physicians and healthcare professionals with effective and clinically relevant strategies targeted to increase the smoking quit rates for patients followed in multiple practice settings. This article describes the content, delivery, and outcomes of 2 continuing medical education (CME) courses delivered in Arizona to health and human service professionals and compares the impact of longer and shorter programs.

Overall, both project participants and project coordinators were very positive about their experiences and the outcomes of the projects. Several projects went beyond expectations, utilizing patient audits to determine outcomes and indicated changes in processes and behaviors to improve patient outcomes in smoking cessation. Many grantees indicated that their project was a catalyst for future programs and other policy changes. Finally, local CME coordinators acknowledged that this type of project with supporting evaluation and content assisted them in providing higher quality CME and meeting the new Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education requirements.