Chrysalis Wellness Initiative: Tobacco Tackle Announcement and Updates

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By Hilleary Reinhardt

Announcement: Chrysalis is officially a tobacco and smoke free campus! Chrysalis takes a holistic approach towards mental health recovery, focusing on individual’s entire lives, including mind, body, spirit, and community and understands the impact that tobacco use and smoking has on the whole person. Chrysalis staff members, program participants, and visitors all benefit from the improved health benefits of creating an environment free from tobacco use. 

In May 2020, Chrysalis was awarded a Bucket Approach Integration Award from the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Interventions (UW-CTRI). The Bucket Approach is an evidence-based tobacco dependence intervention tailored to smokers coping with mental health concerns and designed for those who work in the behavioral health field. Over the past year, with the support of UW-CTRI, Chrysalis has been working on a project called the “Chrysalis Wellness Initiative: Tobacco Tackle”. Through this project, we aimed to support the Chrysalis community as we increase the number of conversations surrounding tobacco use and created a tobacco free campus with the goal of reducing tobacco use in the Chrysalis community. 

Our Tobacco Tackle committee, consisting of staff, Chrysalis participants, and human resources has worked to educate our staff on how to have conversation with Chrysalis participants about their tobacco use and facilitate Chrysalis becoming a tobacco/smoke free campus in a way that does not promote shame or stigma. Over the course of the last year, the Tobacco Tackle Committee has been able to do the following with the support of Chrysalis and UW-CTRI:

  • Bucket Approach training with UW-CTRI in all staff meeting
  • Creation and rollout of smoke free policies in the Chrysalis Handbook
  • Signage around office to promote quitting
  • Creation of electronic resources for staff to use when discussing quitting with participants
  • Quit packs consisting of a fidget and quit resources
  • Implementation of the Bucket Approach into individual Chrysalis programs 

We at Chrysalis want you to know that we are here to support you in your journey to quit smoking or using tobacco and we support you WHEREVER you are on your journey!

We would like to give a special thanks to UW-CTRI for their support through the last year–we would not have been able to do it without your guidance and financial support.