Health Promotions Programs

Smoking Cessation Program

Treating addiction requires behavioral and pharmacological therapy. People smoke for a number of reasons including relaxation, stress, cravings or habits. The treatment for nicotine addiction usually involves behavioral, pharmacologic and psychological therapy. For instance, habits warrant behavioral therapy and emotional reasons encourage the patient to work to develop coping skills before quitting. For these reasons, tobacco cessation programs need to have the involvement of addiction/health counselors, physicians or nurse practitioners and psychologists. Our intervention program will perform an initial assessment to determine the stage of readiness. This will consist of a psychological assessment and level of dependency (Fagerstrom's questionnaire), depression screening (Beck's Depression Inventory). We will ask participants to attend group sessions (12-15) meetings for 1-2 hrs every week for 4 weeks, then every 2 weeks x1. In addition we will provide educational materials that aid in smoking cessation, discussion sessions, and pharmacotherapy like Zyban and Nicotine patch/gum to aid in the quitting process. Follow up will be maintained up to a year to assess success rates or monitor relapses.

Treatment of the overweight or obese patient is a two-step process: assessment and management. Assessment requires determination of the degree of obesity and absolute risk status. Management includes weight control or reducing excess body weight and marinating that weight loss as well as instituting other measure to control associated risk factors. This management will follow the guidelines of the Obesity Education Initiative (OEI) launched by the National Heart, Lunch and Blood Institute (NHLBI). All patients will have their BMI calculated. Those who are overweight(<=30) or obese (>=30)will be referred to the weight management program.