State Medicaid Tobacco Coverage Survey

Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death in the United States despite the availability of evidence-based treatments for tobacco dependence, which include counseling and FDA-approved pharmacotherapies. Medicaid recipients have approximately 50% greater smoking prevalence than the overall U.S. adult population, and they are disproportionately affected by tobacco-related disease and disability. Substantial action to improve coverage of tobacco-dependence treatments through Medicaid will be needed if the United States is to achieve the 2010 National Health Objective of 12% smoking prevalence among adults. CDC plans to request reinstatement of OMB approval to collect information about Medicaid coverage of tobacco-dependence treatments during the years 2008-2010. Respondents will be Medicaid directors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. To minimize burden, each respondent will receive an electronic copy of the survey pre-filled with the previous year's results. Respondents will only be asked to record changes that occurred since the time of the previous submission. In addition, respondents will be asked to answer new questions pertaining to the recommendations made in the updated PHS clinical practice guideline issued in May of 2008 regarding coverage for combination therapies, smokeless tobacco use, and their familiarity with and use of the 2000 PHS guideline.