State tobacco control staffing – 7/20/12

Q: The Indiana Tobacco Control Program is reviewing its job classifications, and would like to learn about positions within tobacco control programs in other states. Does your state health department employ staff to fill the following positions?

  1. Cessation Director
  2. Policy positions

If available, please provide sample job descriptions for each.

A:

  1. Arkansas: Here's copy of Arkansas's Functional Job Description for the Cessation Section Chief. Also attached is the Health Program Specialist job description.
     
  2. California: The California Tobacco Control Program does not have a Cessation Director.  However, we do have a Strategic Planning and Policy Unit with three staff. Attached are the duty statements for these individuals:
      
  3. Louisiana: Attached is Louisiana’s Policy Analyst job description.
     
  4. Missouri: In Missouri, no one is assigned to just one function. We have the following staff in the Department of Health and Senior Services:
     
    • Program Coordinator (central office) – manage all aspects
       
    • Quitline and Contracts Manager (central office) – manages the Quitline but is also responsible for our contracting functions, manages resources, acts as back-up to the Program Coordinator, etc.
       
    • 5 Community Policy Specialists (field offices) – main focus is on policy, working with local communities and youth prevention interventions, but also are technical assistants related to cessation
       
    • ½ time Research Analyst – responsible for data analysis and evaluation; works with a team of other epidemiology staff, BRFSS, others (who we do not pay for)
       
    • Approximately 1¼ support staff
       
    We also contract with the University of Missouri for a full-time youth coordinator position.
     
  5. New Hampshire: No, our state health department does not employ staff to fill these positions.
     
  6. Rhode Island: Attached are job descriptions for our Policy Analyst and Cessation Coordinator positions. The State title for the policy analyst position remains the standard “Senior Public Health Promotion Specialist.”
     
  7. South Dakota: In South Dakota, those responsibilities fall under the role the Tobacco Control Program Director and as such would be considered a state position. The only applicable language from that job description is the all-inclusive other duties as assigned.
     
  8. Vermont: In Vermont we have had positions dedicated to community coalitions, cessation, media, youth, and tobacco chief. Over the past year we have been tasked with integration and exploring how to do this without losing focus and expertise in certain areas. We have rolled youth and community into one position with an emphasis on policy (in order to maximize coordinated efforts between these demographics with growing expertise in point of sale and smoke free public spaces). We've been able to keep one position dedicated to cessation although not named as such. The position titles in the tobacco group are Public Health Tobacco Specialist although we retitled one position recently as Public Health Chronic Disease Specialist to reflect our growing integration movement. Moreover, our Communications Specialist will predominantly focus on tobacco but with some dedicated time to chronic disease integration efforts, and our tobacco chief position now reflects the title of chronic disease prevention chief. All our positions are state positions. Our position descriptions are still quite general, but the job description for the position dedicated to cessation is attached here.
     
  9. Washington: We are in the process of hiring an FTE that will be half focus on cessation and the other half on youth prevention (especially youth access, e.g. Synar). We hope that in the future, our funding will be expanded enough to let these functions have a full FTE each, but we have approval for the Youth Tobacco Access and Cessation Coordinator position now. Click here for the job description.
     
  10. West Virginia: See attached files:
      

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Editor’s note: Another relevant TCN Help Your Peers request asked how many staff within state tobacco programs are assigned to cessation. See: State staff assigned to cessation – 10/16/12

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