Robert Adsit, MEd, outreach director, General Internal Medicine and UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, served on the faculty of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2017 Tobacco Control Action-Planning Academy.

Mr. Adsit is one of three instructors teaching the Comprehensive Cessation Interventions Knowledge Building Course, which focuses on health systems change and transformation.

The academy is designed for state tobacco control program staff members and their non-government partners. The goals of the course are to:

• Help attendees use the "three buckets of prevention" framework and the CDC's cessation best practices to help transform health systems in each state
• Identify key drivers, barriers and leverage points for aligning tobacco-control program agendas with those of key players in health systems transformation, including state Medicaid agencies, commercial payers, and large hospital/clinic systems.
• Communicate the business case for health systems change and cessation coverage to employers, purchasers and insurers using state-specific data and evaluation.
• Address issues unique to behavioral health and other vulnerable populations when planning for systems change and systems transformation.

"I was honored to be invited to be a faculty member," Adsit said, "and to share with the Academy participants our work in Wisconsin on health systems change."

This article was contributed by the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.