Fiore to head federal subcommittee

Michael Fiore, director of the Univesrity of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention and professor of medicine at the UW Medical School, has been selected to head the Cessation Subcommittee of the Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The subcommittee is charged with making recommendations to the Secretary of HHS on how the department can promote tobacco use cessation and thus reduce the disastrous health and economic effects of smoking nationwide.

The subcommittee is designed to promote action, not study. “We have already strong scientific evidence about what needs to be done,” says Fiore. “We are looking for ways to implement current recommendations for clinicians, healthcare systems, communities and consumers. We want to put research into practice.”

The subcommittee will prepare a report for HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson that will outline specific action steps to promote tobacco cessation in 2003 and beyond. The report will identify solutions to current barriers, and ways to integrate efforts and promote cessation most effectively.

Fiore previously headed the panel that created the U.S. Public Health Service Guideline: Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence, which serves as the gold standard for cessation treatment.