May e-Newsletter

May e-Newsletter

Protect your family, take the smoke outside

Smokefree South West will launch a major campaign on May 23rd urging smokers across the South West to protect their families by taking their smoke outside.

Worrying new research shows that more people are smoking in the home or allowing others to do so with the figure currently standing at around 1 million people (20%) in the area (YouGov 2010). Smokefree South West''s multi-media campaign aims to halve this number by the year 2015. Below is a still from the hard-hitting television advertisement which will be on screens across the South West.

It focuses on the danger of second and thirdhand smoke to the whole family, especially children. Poisonous chemicals can linger on a variety of household items after the smoke has ceased to be visible.

Smokefree South West has developed a brand new "smoke outside pack", containing information about the best way to create a smokefree home, tools to aid smokers to protect their families as well as information about quitting which will be available to families across the South West.

There will be full coverage of the launch in the next newsletter.

Support to stop smoking in hospitals

Smokefree South West, working alongside the South West's 14 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), is rolling out a major programme of work across the South West to increase the numbers of patients, staff and visitors referred to our stop smoking services within hospitals.

PCTs throughout the South West are in various stages of delivering this work. A drop-in smoking pod funded by Smokefree South West has opened at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital as part of this plan. The pod is open Monday to Friday, for seven hours a day with a private booth at the back available for on-the-spot consultations with advisers without the need to make an appointment. The facility is open to patients, visitors and staff. Elaine Watson, manager of the service, said: "We're really excited about launching the pod. You''re four times more likely to quit when you use the support of the NHS Stop Smoking service rather than going it alone." Dr Sally Pearson, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust's Director of Clinical Strategy, added: "As a smokefree trust we are fully committed to providing support for those who want to quit."

Detailed policies also are being developed offering template guidance for Acute Trusts on how their sites can become smokefree, how best to engage staff and how best to offer support to patients and visitors to stop smoking. With hospitals in the area such Derriford in Plymouth having over 48,000 people passing through its doors every week the potential impact is huge. Smokefree branding highlighting the smokefree status of hospital sites is then put in place in prominent positions as confirmation of the huge progress made on the site.

Changing school smoking norms

Every year, around 200,000 British schoolchildren start smoking, many carrying the addiction into adulthood. The ages 12 to 15 are when most begin with an estimated 31,000 young people lighting up in the South West and a shocking 45 teenagers starting smoking every day. An integral part of Smokefree South West's work is to combat this worrying trend.

We have been supporting the DECIPHer-ASSIST programme which focuses on implementation of evidence-based health improvement interventions. It dispels the idea that peer influence is almost always negative, instead the programme encourages new norms of smoking behaviour by training influential children to work as 'peer supporters,' spreading the word about the benefits of being smoke free in informal conversations with their friends and class mates.

Smokefree South West has been able to support PCTs and schools in taking this programme forward by purchasing DECIPHer-ASSIST licences and providing expert advice and assistance. Overall, students in the schools offering the programme were about 25 per cent less likely to take up smoking than those in the control schools. It is has proven to be cost-effective at £32 per year 8 child, equivalent to £1,500 for every child that the programme prevents taking up smoking.