Katrina grew up in a family that smoked, and it was this experience that inspired her to specialize in pulmonology as a nurse practitioner. While working in an Emergency Department in a county with the highest smoking rate in the state of Maryland, Katrina became acutely aware of the damage that smoking was doing to the people in her community. “Pulmonary really spoke to me not just because of all the patients that I had taken care of previously, but also because my mom had been a three-pack a day smoker for over 50 years,” Katrina said.
That is until, about 12 years ago, Katrina’s mom became determined to quit. Her steadfast resolve helped her achieve this with little outside help, but Katrina’s father, who decided to try to quit at the same time, struggled with cravings. This journey to quit smoking became even more of a family affair when Katrina’s siblings decided to quit as well. Katrina was impressed by how leaning on each other and working on talking about their struggles allowed them to stay off tobacco.
Creating a Cessation Community
Because of this upbringing, the Freedom From Smoking® cessation program seemed like a no brainer to Katrina. While treating many patients with COPD, a chronic condition mainly caused by smoking, she saw the need for a cessation group in her community. She applied and was approved to receive grant funding to start the program. She took the online course and began giving consultations and one-on-one sessions based on the eight-week Freedom From Smoking® curriculum with a combination of in-person and telehealth sessions. “We have a lot of cardiac and vascular patients that we have identified as needing support with our smoking cessation program. We also have a lung cancer treatment center here and so we encourage those patients going through treatment to stop smoking with the help of our program,” Katrina said.
She was particularly excited to venture into virtual courses because she believes they allow even more people to participate. “Online offerings are great because when you are going through cancer treatments, for example, it’s not exactly easy to get to class if you aren’t feeling great or the weather is bad,” she explained.
An Unbelievable Impact on Health
As the program has grown, Katrina has been able to add more facilitators and offers the eight-week course to any individual interested about four times a year. And the impact it has made has been inspiring. “Quitting is a challenging task, and I think it is important to recognize that. For many of my patients who are in their 60s and 70s, they started smoking when it was culturally reinforced and before we knew the health effects,” Katrina explained. She believes that making the classes a place of empathy and acceptance is important to healing, as many people feel shame about their dependency on smoking.
Once such patient was a woman with lung cancer who resisted quit programs because she felt smoking had a bad stigma. “Since she was so guarded, I tried instead to connect with her on another level. We talked about our shared nationality, which was Polish, and once I got her talking, she became more receptive to what I was saying about quitting,” Katrina said.
In fact, those interactions motived that woman to grab a friend and enroll in Freedom From Smoking®, where she was able to be vocal about her feelings because she felt safe. She has been tobacco free for over a year now and because of this, Katrina has been able to lower her medications. “Quitting makes such a difference because even one puff of a cigarette is irritating your lung tissue and causing a cough reflex. So, when you stop, most patients find their chronic coughing subsides which can help their lungs heal,” Katrina said. “For some this means they can back off some medicines, which makes their quality of life so much better.”
“Freedom From Smoking® is particularly effective because it addresses not just the physical addiction but the psychological piece which can at times be even harder. Talking about triggers and stigmas and getting to the root of the problem is what I believe makes someone successful and is what we really try to focus on,” Katrina said.
Katrina’s passion for helping people quit smoking is why the program continues to thrive in her community and why she believes every community should offer something similar. Learn more about Freedom From Smoking® and how you can become a facilitator.
Blog last updated: February 11, 2025
