OTRU partners with a number of organizations and initiatives:

Strategy Design and Evaluation Initiative

The Strategy Design and Evaluation Initiative (SDEI) builds on OTRU’s work with the Smoke Free Ontario Strategy to conduct research and evaluation on strategies aimed at addressing complex health and social problems. The SDEI is concerned with whether, how, when and why public health strategies deployed to alleviate complex problems achieve greater and lesser success. Governments use strategies for a variety of problems including, for example: tobacco, cannabis, poverty, sexual violence, gambling, drug overdoses, and housing. What does and does not get included in these strategies and how they are implemented will have a substantial effect on success in alleviating social problems. Learn more about the Strategy Design and Evaluation Initiative.

Quit Smoking and Vaping Resources

The following quit smoking and vaping resources are offered by OTRU partners.

Quash

Quash is a free smoking and vaping cessation program for youth and emerging adults (ages 14-30), that makes it easy to build a custom plan for quitting. Co-designed with youth and available across Canada in English and French, Quash consists of four core program elements:

• Curated website and resources
• Mobile app (available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store)
• Adult ally training
• Coaching

Over the last three years, the Lung Health Foundation (LHF) has been funded by Health Canada to develop, implement and evaluate the Quash program, which launched in 2021. Now, LHF is focused on raising awareness about Quash, increasing use, and training adult allies to support young people in using it.

Build Smoke-Free

This free interactive Quit Course was created by a team at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the Canadian Cancer Society to help people quit smoking and stay quit as part of Build Smoke-Free. This educational tool is offered in both French and English.

CAMH’s Vaping Cessation Resources

In response to the growing prevalence of e-cigarette use, CAMH’s Nicotine Dependence Service has developed an evidence-informed clinical guidance resource for healthcare providers to help support adults and youth (ages 15-24) who want to quit vaping. This resource was developed in collaboration with a group of international experts in the field of tobacco and vaping as well as people with lived/living experience of e-cigarette use.

The recommendations listed in the Vaping Cessation Guidance Resource (EN | FR – PDF) aim to provide general guidance to help adults, youth, people who are pregnant, breastfeeding and/or chest feeding and people with mental illness and/or substance use issues interested in quitting vaping. A List of Assessment Tools (PDF) can also be accessed through the Nicotine Dependence Service website.