I’d like to take a moment to spotlight SCLC’s flagship initiative: its impactful webinar series. As part of SCLC’s mission to advance education and build capacity for tobacco cessation, we launched our webinar series in 2009, and these webinars have since become a cornerstone of our efforts.
Over the past 16 years, SCLC has delivered 157 webinars, attracting 98,414 registrants and engaging 65,480 attendees—a strong 65% attendance rate (Figure).
In 2011, SCLC began accrediting the webinars, offering continuing education credits to physicians and allied health professionals, including nurses, social workers, and pharmacists. This enhancement not only broadened the educational impact of the webinars but also supported a surge in participation. Between 2011 and 2026, we issued 7,870 continuing medical education certificates.
Between 2019 and 2021, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) funded SCLC to provide training and technical assistance to California and other state behavioral health and tobacco control programs. These grants boosted registrations and attendance at our webinars, cementing the series as a vital resource for professionals dedicated to championing tobacco cessation. They also highlighted the importance and benefits of dedicated funding to support training and technical assistance in tobacco cessation.
SCLS’s webinar topics range from awareness building on the harms of commercial tobacco use and implications for the tobacco endgame movement to the importance of addressing tobacco use in behavioral health populations and resources for cessation. The webinar series features topics that resonate with unique audiences, including physicians, respiratory therapists, behavioral health professionals, dentists, and social workers, among others. They also address emerging topics in tobacco and nicotine use and cessation.
The quality and the applicability of the webinars to practice are consistently high. In 2025, 92.8% of attendees rated the webinars as “very good” or “excellent,” and 74.5% reported they would apply what they learned in practice over the next 6 months. Out of the 315 CME certificates issued in 2025, 146 registered claimed CMEs for one webinar, whereas 169 claimed CMEs for multiple webinars.
SCLC’s webinar series continues to empower healthcare and public health professionals nationwide, building knowledge and skills that enable providers to reduce tobacco-related disparities in their research and practice.
In FY27, we will host accredited webinars on emerging topics, including:
- Digital innovations in cessation
- Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists and tobacco cessation
- Tobacco and cannabis co-use and cessation
Stay tuned for these and more in the upcoming year. Webinars and recordings are ADA-accessible—we hope you will check them out!
Webinars are free and available on our website here. For webinars before 2024, please reach out to [email protected] for access to the slides and recordings.