More Classes Scheduled to Help Members Quit Smoking

Still smoking? Help is available. Is there someone in your family who smokes? Help is available for them, too.

The schedule for the continuation of the Health Centers’ award-winning smoking cessation classes is published here. This quit smoking program has had an unparalleled success rate, enough to warrant recognition from the City of New York itself.

As we have reported before, beating the smoking habit is one of the most difficult health choices a person can make. While the multiple big benefits of smoking cessation are obvious, quitting the habit can be exceedingly difficult. Recognizing this, the Health Centers and the Members Health Assistance Program (MHAP) came up with a program that offers several support strategies to assist smokers in successfully quitting. Any member who expresses a desire to quit the smoking habit now has the opportunity to attend support classes, receive free medications, and get individual counseling, all aimed at helping the member achieve better health by not smoking.

Smoking cessation classes are scheduled for the Midtown Health Center (773-775 Ninth Avenue) on Thursdays this month (October 10, 17 and 24), from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. November classes are scheduled for Tuesdays (November 5, 12, 19, and 26) at the Queens Health Center (37-11 Queens Boulevard). December classes are scheduled for Mondays (December 9, 16, 23 and 30) at the Members Health Assistance Program (MHAP), which is located at 14 Penn Plaza, suite 407.

The cost of smoking is so heavy it is almost indescribable. It is estimated that a smoker costs the health care system over $100,000 more in a lifetime than a non-smoker. Multiply this by the 45 million smokers in the U.S. and you have a good idea of why healthcare costs are out of control and threatening the well being of everyone. Yes, 45 million U.S. adults — a full 19 percent of the nation’s adult population — still smoke. And the impact is devastating. Smoking causes one out of every five deaths annually in the U.S. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says that on average smokers die 13 to 14 years younger than non-smokers. Cost-wise, smoking is one of the country’s leading causes of alarm. The CDC says smoking costs the U.S. healthcare system more than $100 billion annually. In other words, if no one smoked in the U.S., people would spend more than $100 billion less per year on health care.

These are some of the reasons why the Health Centers began the ambitious smoking cessation program. The classes that are part of the program were designed with success in mind. These classes provide the necessary professional direction, guidance and social support to get members through all the phases of quitting, including getting back on track, after having failed previously to quit.

Under the program, any co-pays are waived for all medications that are used to treat the deadly smoking addiction. The Health Center pharmacists offer counseling on the medications available to help members of our Union and their family members quit smoking. Also, primary care physicians and/or dentists also offer personal direction, counseling and treatment for all those who smoke. Reminders are sent to those who smoke to help keep them motivated to stop smoking.

All of this has led to some great success in helping members quit smoking. A 90-day follow up survey on those who participated in the program has found that more than one third of all participants had successfully quit smoking. That type of success rate makes the Health Centers program the envy of smoking cessation programs everywhere.

It is encouraging to know that one of the world’s most difficult addictions has become so much easier to stop as a result of an innovative program at the Health Centers. “Even members who have been unsuccessful in previous attempts to quit smoking will benefit from this program,” Benefit Funds Chief Executive Officer Dr. Robert Greenspan says. “There are new medications and techniques available to help people stop smoking, and all of them are considerations for those who enter the program.”

“We hope that our success rate of 40 percent will encourage even the most doubtful smokers to try our quit smoking program,” Dr. Vincent Jarvis, the Chief Medical Officer of the Benefit Funds, told Hotel Voice earlier this year. “With such a strong addiction, most smokers think they can’t quit smoking. But our program works! We tell smokers, ‘together we can quit smoking!’”