Heart Foundation: Days 3/4
Wednesday was spent mostly reading through all of the packets of resources that they have given me here, nothing too newsworthy to write an entire post about. It has been really nice having a desk and large computer to work with to spread out all of the papers in front of me as well as having word documents open in front of me for my notes and ideas. As for today, Thursday, I had two really great meetings.
The first was with a woman named Fiona Phillips from Cancer Council of Western Australia's "Make Smoking History" campaign. They are a non-governmental organization (NGO) who employ a range of strategies to combat tobacco use. They focus on four main areas; mass media advertisements (3-4 per year to target adults 18+), policy advocating, education & research, and community service programs (cessation support). The original campaign was called "Quit WA" and was run by the Western Australian Government until 2000, when it was handed over to the Cancer Council of WA, and it tuned into "Make Smoking History". The percentage of smokers in WA was around 17% when the campaign started, and it is down to 12% now, with a rate of 9% for daily smoking. Of course, this rate is higher for certain groups like aboriginals, people with mental health issues, alcohol/drug users, as well as lower socioeconomic families. They recognize that these groups may not respond to the same campaign strategies as the general population, so they have to develop alternatives for them to use. Their have run a multitude of mass media campaigns, which all are results of focus groups with smokers. They ask smokers about their attitudes towards a range of things like what they are most scared of, what makes it hard for them to quit/stay quit, how they feel about certain things, etc. What they learned from their most recent focus groups from smokers, is that it makes it much harder for them to quit when others are smoking around them. So that is the idea for their current campaign, "From every quitter to every smoker" which you can watch here. This is the first campaign they have run, ever, where they have been able to use real life people in their ad. The other ads they have run are usually more graphic and emotional, so it is harder to get a smoker to be a part of the campaign. They recruited real smokers for this specific campaign using Facebook, and got 75 interested people which were narrowed down to the 12 shown in the video. They also do check-ups with the smokers down the road to see how things have been going for them, since the campaign, which they hope will be inspirational for other smokers. As for their community service program, it is newer, and its main goal is to provide support for quitters, as well as to just change the culture of smoking. Specifically, the cessation support groups for mental health care patients, there seems to be an idea that "smoking is the least of their issues" when in reality if they could give up smoking, things may get better for them as far as their mental health is concerned. This group also works with local governments to make areas smoke-free, as well as encouraging doctors to be able to talk about the negative affects of smoking with their patients to see what they can do to help. Basically, in a nut shell, they just want to get people to talk about smoking and all of the negative side affects because its almost worse to not talk about it because it makes people think it is okay.
My second meeting was with a woman named Crystal, who also works for ACOSH, who recently did a report on TAFE vocational schools in Australia in regards to their smoke free policies. She summed up all of the issues she saw with the smoke-free policies and how she recommended fixing them. The work she did was very impressive, as she contacted 60 different TAFE schools and got 31 of them to provide valid responses in her survey.
The first was with a woman named Fiona Phillips from Cancer Council of Western Australia's "Make Smoking History" campaign. They are a non-governmental organization (NGO) who employ a range of strategies to combat tobacco use. They focus on four main areas; mass media advertisements (3-4 per year to target adults 18+), policy advocating, education & research, and community service programs (cessation support). The original campaign was called "Quit WA" and was run by the Western Australian Government until 2000, when it was handed over to the Cancer Council of WA, and it tuned into "Make Smoking History". The percentage of smokers in WA was around 17% when the campaign started, and it is down to 12% now, with a rate of 9% for daily smoking. Of course, this rate is higher for certain groups like aboriginals, people with mental health issues, alcohol/drug users, as well as lower socioeconomic families. They recognize that these groups may not respond to the same campaign strategies as the general population, so they have to develop alternatives for them to use. Their have run a multitude of mass media campaigns, which all are results of focus groups with smokers. They ask smokers about their attitudes towards a range of things like what they are most scared of, what makes it hard for them to quit/stay quit, how they feel about certain things, etc. What they learned from their most recent focus groups from smokers, is that it makes it much harder for them to quit when others are smoking around them. So that is the idea for their current campaign, "From every quitter to every smoker" which you can watch here. This is the first campaign they have run, ever, where they have been able to use real life people in their ad. The other ads they have run are usually more graphic and emotional, so it is harder to get a smoker to be a part of the campaign. They recruited real smokers for this specific campaign using Facebook, and got 75 interested people which were narrowed down to the 12 shown in the video. They also do check-ups with the smokers down the road to see how things have been going for them, since the campaign, which they hope will be inspirational for other smokers. As for their community service program, it is newer, and its main goal is to provide support for quitters, as well as to just change the culture of smoking. Specifically, the cessation support groups for mental health care patients, there seems to be an idea that "smoking is the least of their issues" when in reality if they could give up smoking, things may get better for them as far as their mental health is concerned. This group also works with local governments to make areas smoke-free, as well as encouraging doctors to be able to talk about the negative affects of smoking with their patients to see what they can do to help. Basically, in a nut shell, they just want to get people to talk about smoking and all of the negative side affects because its almost worse to not talk about it because it makes people think it is okay.
My second meeting was with a woman named Crystal, who also works for ACOSH, who recently did a report on TAFE vocational schools in Australia in regards to their smoke free policies. She summed up all of the issues she saw with the smoke-free policies and how she recommended fixing them. The work she did was very impressive, as she contacted 60 different TAFE schools and got 31 of them to provide valid responses in her survey.
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