A Statewide Implementation of the Treating Tobacco in Mental Health Settings Training

The primary goal of the project is to conduct a statewide implementation of a 3-day tobacco training for mental health professionals in New Jersey. We will target all 76 New Jersey Division of Mental Health and Addictions Services (DMHAS) funded outpatient programs in New Jersey to provide training in evidence based tobacco dependence treatment and motivational interviewing. These sites serve nearly 300,000 outpatients per year who are usually considered to have serious mental illness (SMI) and are treated in the public sector. Six hundred mental health professionals will be invited to attend one of the three 3-day trainings (approximately 8 staff per outpatient program). The training will be held three times during the project period in different locations to facilitate attendance (North, Central and South New Jersey). The training curricula will be developed by the RWJMS Division of Addiction Psychiatry (based on similar prior trainings) and will contain current evidence-based practice strategies. We will evaluate the training effectiveness via knowledge acquisition and surveys that assess changes in tobacco treatment practices 1 and 6 months after attending. Although we have conducted similar CE activities in the past, we have never implemented these trainings statewide to reach the entire network of community mental health providers.