Advancing policies to reduce tobacco use among state employees – 12/16/11

Q: How has your state tobacco program advocated for evidence-based policies to reduce tobacco use among state government employees? What messages were most effective in educating decision-makers?

If cost savings was an important argument, did you obtain data on state employees' tobacco use prevalence and tobacco-related costs for this population? If so, how?

• Did your state use a standard surveillance tool (BRFSS or ATS) to survey state employees?
• Did you have access to aggregate data on tobacco use among state employees (e.g. via Health Risk Appraisals), or aggregate state employee claims (insurance) data?

A:

1. Oregon: Members of our Public Health Division worked closely with the Public Employees Benefits Board (PEBB) and, in 2006, PEBB began requiring plans serving public employees to offer robust cessation benefits with little or no co-pay including free services through Free and Clear, the Quit Line already contracted to provide service to the state.
    
   In 2007, the largest state agency with approximately 10,000 employees, the Department of Human Services began discussing whether or not to require tobacco-free campuses for all their facilities. Our state tobacco program (TPEP) staff members worked with a small group of high level agency employees to develop a proposal for agency leadership. Leadership adopted the proposal and in May 2008 implemented a phased tobacco-free campus policy for DHS facilities.
    
   TPEP provided technical assistance with policy development, implementation and communications. Tobacco-free DHS gave TPEP and leadership at the agency level practical experience and understanding of the benefits and difficulties of taking a large agency tobacco-free. Next steps include using this experience as a model as TPEP works with our state’s Department of Administrative Services to develop and implement a tobacco-free campus policy for all state facilities and property.
    
   TPEP in conjunction with PEBB has been fielding a BRFSS of State Employees every two years beginning in 2005. This survey has provided excellent information about the health behaviors of state employees, including prevalence, and has been helpful to PEBB in designing appropriate benefits packages. In 2007, TPEP added questions about secondhand smoke and tobacco-free campuses and found strong support among DHS employees for taking DHS campuses tobacco-free. This information was very helpful to leadership as they debated whether or not to implement Tobacco-free DHS.
    
   Having strong benefits in place to help employees quit using tobacco was also important to leadership during their decision making process. The robust benefits helped to deflect the view of some that the policy change was punitive to smokers. Communication about the available benefits and innovative approaches to encouraging people to take advantage of the benefits made policy adoption smoother.

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