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Work with partners in the communities you want to reach
One of the best ways to reach disadvantaged groups is to involve and recruit partners in organisations who work with and are part of the groups you are trying to reach.  You can write to these groups asking them to be involved and offering resources and support.  Or you can train stop smoking advisors from these groups to run events and stop smoking advice sessions.  Or form partnerships and work with these organisations running joint projects to help smokers to take the No Smoking Day Challenge.  Each target group will have different partners you could involve.  This is just a very short list of suggestions to get you thinking of others.  Health visitors and community midwives

Social workers and community workers

Children’s centre staff and Sure Start workers

Fostering and adoption agency staff

Pharmacists

Refugee groups

Health and Children’s charity workers

Paediatric staff for asthma, middle ear infections, or respiratory illness

Charity shop staff

Post Office staff

Nursery and playgroup staff

Primary and secondary school staff

Health centre receptionists

Religious leaders

Representatives from the different communities

Outreach workers for mental health, Asian communities, ex-offenders

Lung charity workers and volunteers

Asthma charity workers and volunteers

Sports and leisure staff

 

CASE STUDY
Polish Quit Group in the Church
Many Polish immigrants smoke.  One PCT linked with the local Polish Church set up a stop smoking group as well as an AA group and Rights advice. 


CASE STUDY
Mental Health Day Centre
A Stop smoking service started a quit group at a mental health centre each week on a rolling basis.  Between 5 and 15 attended the weekly groups and were given one-to-one support on request.  Six stopped smoking at one year from over 30 who came to at least one group meeting.


CASE STUDY
Homeless project
A Drop in health clinic for the homeless has a nurse who offers stop smoking advice and help to every smoker she sees.  She reports that many do not know about the free NHS services and medications available.  Many take up her help after they find shelter and a source of benefits and she has had a lot of successful homeless quitters!

CASE STUDY
Smokefree Homes
In a deprived community where no-one was interested in stopping smoking there was a lot more success in recruiting parents to a Smokefree Homes project.   A significant number of the parents admitted having tried to quit and eventually a Stop Smoking for the Kids group was started.  

Innovative approaches to reaching the target groups
Because established stop smoking help has not made a big impact on the smoking rates of marginalised groups then we need to explore innovative and creative ways to reach these groups.  New approaches can use different locations, days and times and involving partner groups.  Look at some of the case studies and see what makes for an innovative approach to helping smokers to stop smoking.  Here are some brief suggestions for types of innovation:

    * Combine stop smoking support with other activities such as

Quit & Benefit – stop smoking advice and financial management and budgeting for people with limited budgets.

Quit & Get Fit – aerobics and stop smoking sessions

Stepping for Stopping – keep fit and quit sessions

Coping with Stress without a Cigarette – relaxation and stress management with stop smoking counselling

Smokefree Massage – stop smoking with massage

Fag-free Football – football training and quit advice

Blokes who Smoke – men only quit groups in workplaces factories

Darts without Dogends – Pub quit groups and darts games

Smokefree Skittle Challenge – as above.

Bingo without Fag breaks – as above but in bingo clubs

    * Setting up challenges to offer extra support

Fag-free Family Challenge – recruit families to quit together

No to Nicotine Neighbourhood Challenge – neighbours helping each other

Single Mums Smokefree Chums – one parent quit groups

Incentives such as ‘Bring a friend and get a £10 voucher’ or free NRT for 2 or more attending together.

    * Getting to large numbers of people

No Smoking Day Challenge Fair or Give it Up Give it a Go or Give it Up and Live it Up stop smoking event with lots of stalls and professionals giving advice on health benefits, money matters, make up, types of medications, healthy eating etc held in a large public place.

Lunch Bunch No Smoking Day Challenge – stop smoking group with lunch as an incentive.  Who says there’s no such a thing as a free lunch!

CASE STUDY
Small grants for innovative projects
One PCT offered community and religious groups in disadvantaged areas small grants for stop smoking and tobacco control projects.  The application form gave guidance and contacts for help.  The projects had varying success but raised the profile of tobacco issues and provided training for all pubic health workers who visited the projects as a ‘barefoot’ tobacco control tour!

CASE STUDY
Health Fair at midnight for Asian restaurant workers
Many Asian men in a town worked in Indian restaurants. Most worked long hours until midnight or 1am.  A Heart Health project set up a health fair with stop smoking advice starting at midnight and continuing until 2.30am.  They bussed in the restaurant workers after their shifts and took them home after the fair.   

CASE STUDY
Taxi Drivers
Taxi drivers – who are predominantly immigrants and refugees groups – were asked to wear No Smoking Day caps and carry No Smoking Day literature in their cabs.  But the local organisers took the opportunity to raise the issue of stopping smoking with the drivers.

Publicity ideas
Publicity and media coverage about the Great No Smoking Day Challenge and the stop smoking services is essential to raise awareness and reach large numbers of people with information about how to quit.  Publicity should focus on motivational reasons for quitting and practical advice on how to quit and where to get help.  Most people don’t have access to vast advertising budgets so you need to create unpaid publicity.  Selecting media that reaches your target groups needs research.  It may be a local community or school newsletter or website, a weekly newsletter from a place of worship or a community radio station.  See publicity guide on the No Smoking Day website for more guidance on using the media.

Here are some suggestions for storylines:

* Testimonials from people within the target group are an ideal way of giving identification and hope to others in similar situations wanting to quit.

* Gather stories of ex-smokers who have quit from the target group.

* Look for interesting angles of why they decided to quit, who and what helped them and the benefits and barriers they have encountered since quitting.  Pick the best bits of the testimonial. See the structured interview format to help you.

* Look for stories that link in with cultural aspects of your target group.  For example for social classes C & D:

Family stories of siblings and parents and adult children quitting together.

Price comparisons in the style of supermarkets on stopping or continuing to smoke.

Emphasise that the services are friendly and FREE.

Compare the odds of success of different quitting methods in the style of racing odds.

Stories of celebrities, respected by the community, who have quit.

Compare all the stop smoking help available with examples of people who have used each one.

Give stories of people within the target group who have suffered from smoking related diseases or other problems.

* Give tips on coping without a cigarette for the different types of cigarette smoking throughout the day.  The different cigarette types are :

‘More time for me’

‘Relax’

‘Reward incentive’

‘Fill a gap of time’

‘Need a fix’

‘Need to cope’

* Set up a photo-opportunity.  Pictures speak a thousand words and are more likely to catch the eye of your target group if you use people or places that the target group identify with.  This should be a publicity goal.  They should relate to your story but need to be visually interesting.  Include props such as :

Quitters wearing the same t-shirts or t-shirts with a large letter on each spelling out a message or holding placards or a banner.

Quitters holding items that represent the method or reasons for quitting.

People holding a cig and stubbing it out into a target.

CASE STUDY
Inspirational quitter
A 30-a-day smoker who was a well-known leader in a very disadvantaged community in the town suffered from long-term ill-health and disability.  The smoking also caused economic hardship to his family.  Doctors gave him a warning ‘Quit or die’.  So he quit.  His photo and story were used for a No Smoking Day newspaper feature.  His reasons for stopping and the benefits for him and his family were a moving and powerful advocacy tool to encourage others in the community to stop smoking.  He was smokefree for 18 months before he sadly died aged 59. 

CASE STUDY
Wedding guests’ story and photo
On his 25th wedding anniversary a man studied the wedding photo of his family and guests present on the day.  He explored a hunch he had.  Of the 30 people in the photo, 12 were smokers and 18 were non-smokers.  All the smokers except one had either died prematurely or suffered from smoking related diseases.  All the smokers had gone on to live healthy lives with the exception of his cousin who had a brain haemorrhage aged 35.  The story provided a No Smoking Day feature article.

 

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