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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.
o Health visitors and community midwives
o Social workers and community workers
o Children’s centre staff and Sure Start workers
o Fostering and adoption agency staff
o Pharmacists
o Refugee groups
o Health and Children’s charity workers
o Paediatric staff for asthma, middle ear infections, or respiratory
illness
o Charity shop staff
o Post Office staff
o Nursery and playgroup staff
o Primary and secondary school staff
o Health centre receptionists
o Religious leaders
o Representatives from the different communities
o Outreach workers for mental health, Asian communities, ex-offenders
o Lung charity workers and volunteers
o Asthma charity workers and volunteers
o Sports and leisure staff
CASE STUDY
Polish Quit Group in the Church
Many Polish immigrants smoke. One
PCT linked with the local PolishChurch 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 Kidsgroup 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:
o Combine stop smoking support with other activities
such as
Ø Quit &
Benefit – stop smoking advice and financial management and budgeting for people
with limited budgets.
Ø Quit & Get
Fit – aerobics and stop smoking sessions
Ø Stepping for
Stopping – keep fit and quit sessions
Ø Coping with
Stress without a Cigarette – relaxation and stress management with stop smoking
counselling
Ø Smokefree
Massage – stop smoking with massage
Ø Fag-free
Football – football training and quit advice
Ø Blokes who Smoke
– men only quit groups in workplaces factories
Ø Darts without
Dogends – Pub quit groups and darts games
Ø Smokefree
Skittle Challenge – as above.
Ø Bingo without
Fag breaks – as above but in bingo clubs
o Setting up challenges to offer extra support
Ø Fag-free Family
Challenge – recruit families to quit together
Ø No to Nicotine
Neighbourhood Challenge – neighbours helping each other
Ø Single Mums
Smokefree Chums – one parent quit groups
Ø Incentives such
as ‘Bring a friend and get a £10 voucher’ or free NRT for 2 or more attending
together.
o Getting to large numbers of people
Ø 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.
Ø 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:
o Testimonials from people within the target group are
an ideal way of giving identification and hope to others in similar situations
wanting to quit.
o Gather stories of ex-smokers who have quit from the
target group.
o 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.
o Look for stories that link in with cultural aspects
of your target group. For example for social
classes C & D:
Ø Family stories
of siblings and parents and adult children quitting together.
Ø Price
comparisons in the style of supermarkets on stopping or continuing to smoke.
Ø Emphasise that
the services are friendly and FREE.
Ø Compare the odds
of success of different quitting methods in the style of racing odds.
Ø Stories of
celebrities, respected by the community, who have quit.
Ø Compare all the
stop smoking help available with examples of people who have used each
one.
Ø Give stories of
people within the target group who have suffered from smoking related diseases
or other problems.
o Give tips on coping without a cigarette for the
different types of cigarette smoking throughout the day. The different cigarette types are :
Ø ‘More time for
me’
Ø ‘Relax’
Ø ‘Reward
incentive’
Ø ‘Fill a gap of
time’
Ø ‘Need a fix’
Ø ‘Need to cope’
o 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 :
Ø 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.
Ø Quitters holding
items that represent the method or reasons for quitting.
Ø 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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