TY - JOUR
T1 - Commentary
T2 - Educational and clinical training for addressing tobacco-related cancer health disparities
AU - Sheffer, Christine E.
AU - Hooper, Monica Webb
AU - Ostroff, Jamie S.
PY - 2018/6/1
Y1 - 2018/6/1
N2 - In the United States, tobacco use is a leading contributor to inequities in cancer health among individuals for many ethnic, racial, sexual minority, and other minority groups as well as individuals in lower socioeconomic groups and other underserved populations. Despite remarkable decreases in tobacco use prevalence rates in the United States over the past 50 years, the benefits of tobacco control efforts are not equitably distributed. Tobacco-related disparities include higher prevalence rates of smoking, lower rates of quitting, less robust responses to standard evidence-based treatments, substandard tobacco treatment delivery by health care providers, and an increased burden of tobacco-related cancers and other diseases. Among the multiple critical barriers to achieving progress in reducing tobacco treatment-related disparities, there are several educational barriers including a unidimensional or essentialist conceptualizations of the disparities; a tobacco treatment workforce unprepared to address the needs of tobacco users from underserved groups; and known research-to-practice gaps in understanding, assessing, and treating tobacco use among underserved groups. We propose the development of competency-based curricula that: 1) use intersectionality as an organizing framework for relevant knowledge; 2) teach interpersonal skills, such as expressing sociocultural respect, a lack of cultural superiority, and empathy as well as skills for developing other-oriented therapeutic relations; and 3) are grounded in the science of the evidence-based treatments for tobacco dependence. These curricula could be disseminated nationally in multiple venues and would represent significant progress toward addressing tobacco-related disparities. Ethn Dis. 2018;28(3):187-192.
AB - In the United States, tobacco use is a leading contributor to inequities in cancer health among individuals for many ethnic, racial, sexual minority, and other minority groups as well as individuals in lower socioeconomic groups and other underserved populations. Despite remarkable decreases in tobacco use prevalence rates in the United States over the past 50 years, the benefits of tobacco control efforts are not equitably distributed. Tobacco-related disparities include higher prevalence rates of smoking, lower rates of quitting, less robust responses to standard evidence-based treatments, substandard tobacco treatment delivery by health care providers, and an increased burden of tobacco-related cancers and other diseases. Among the multiple critical barriers to achieving progress in reducing tobacco treatment-related disparities, there are several educational barriers including a unidimensional or essentialist conceptualizations of the disparities; a tobacco treatment workforce unprepared to address the needs of tobacco users from underserved groups; and known research-to-practice gaps in understanding, assessing, and treating tobacco use among underserved groups. We propose the development of competency-based curricula that: 1) use intersectionality as an organizing framework for relevant knowledge; 2) teach interpersonal skills, such as expressing sociocultural respect, a lack of cultural superiority, and empathy as well as skills for developing other-oriented therapeutic relations; and 3) are grounded in the science of the evidence-based treatments for tobacco dependence. These curricula could be disseminated nationally in multiple venues and would represent significant progress toward addressing tobacco-related disparities. Ethn Dis. 2018;28(3):187-192.
KW - Cancer
KW - Minority groups
KW - Smoking
KW - Tobacco
KW - Vulnerable populations
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049856609&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85049856609&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.18865/ed.28.3.187
DO - 10.18865/ed.28.3.187
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85049856609
VL - 28
SP - 187
EP - 192
JO - Ethnicity and Disease
JF - Ethnicity and Disease
SN - 1049-510X
IS - 3
ER -