Avoiding High-Risk Behaviors: Smoking Prevention and Cessation in Diabetes Care

Smoking and other high-risk behaviors can result in devastating health conse-quences for patients with diabetes, in addition to patients with cardiovascular disease and cancer. The prevention and treatment of smoking should be a high priority for diabetes care providers. Effective strategies to implement behavioral change are discussed. Avoiding high-risk behaviors is an important area of focus for health care professionals. Smoking represents one of the most significant behavioral threats to the health of individuals because of the devastating conse-quences of tobacco use. The health effects of smoking are widely known in the general population, but the spe-cific threats that smoking poses to the lives of diabetic patients deserve spe-cial attention. State-of-the-art diabetes care should include smoking preven-tion and cessation as a priority of treatment. This article will review the research about smoking and diabetes and provide recommendations about how to help patients avoid initiating or continuing smoking as a high-risk behavior. Smoking has received substantial attention as a health behavior, and much is known about the effective prevention and management of this habit. However, there are other high-risk health behaviors that are linked to negative health outcomes and war-rant attention in diabetes care. This article, using smoking as a specific model, will highlight how diabetes care providers can approach patients regarding behavioral changes to pro-mote health