Report on a Public Health Campaign to Reduce Smoking in Australia

This report discusses the Quit Now campaign, a public health campaign aimed at reducing smoking in Australia. It covers the prevalence of smoking, the campaign approach, analysis of the campaign, and future actions.

400285 Public Health 2018 – Assignment 1
Assignment 1 — Report on a public health campaign
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Commonality, prevalence, distribution, population or risk factors
Smoking remains one of the major threats to public health in Australia and as
per the Heart foundation data (2018), one in every seven Australian who are
aged 15 and above smokes 10 to 12 cigarettes every day. A research survey
was published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2015 that was
conducted by the national health survey organisation and the data revealed
that 16.9% males and 12.1% of women used to smoke daily (The Heart
Foundation). Despite the fact that the rate of smoking is decreasing, it remains
as a threat of public health because of the increasing ate if teenager and
below 15 years aged smokers in Australia (World Health Organization, 2015).
Smoking is a threat to public health because of the two primary factors such as
high prevalence of smoking amongst young and adult generations in Australia
and secondly the smoking and associated severe diseases (LILLARD, 2015).
There are several pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies which
are used by several public health campaigns throughout the world such as anti-
nicotine therapy (pharmacological) and awareness and educational sessions
(non-pharmacological) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013).
Further several public health organisations used health promotional campaigns
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400285 Public Health 2018 – Assignment 1
in areas or locations where the population was prone to adverse effects related
to smoking is higher. Hence, it helped them to reduce the number of smokers by
enhancing the scope of behavioural changes (World Health Organization, 2015).
While discussing the prevalence it was found that 30% of the world population
used to smoke as the data of World Health Organization and within Australia as
per the data of health foundation, percentage of smokers are 21% in northern
territory, 18% in Tasmania, 16% in Queensland, as well as 15% in New south
Wales (The Heart Foundation, 2018). Therefore, the population at risk as per the
data and demographics are younger generation, people with high as well as low
socio-economic factors, people with cultural and geographical; influence and
others.
Campaign approach
Quit Now is the campaign that the Australian Government is currently
operating to reducing the number of smokers around the country. The
campaign provides complete support to the people of Australia and employed
helathcare workers by providing them guidebooks such as my quit buddy for
smokers, and campaign operating toolkit for helathcare workers (Abascal et
al., 2012). The campaign was dealing with a social and ideological theory and
involved aspects which could make people socially and ideologically aware
and they could quit smoking for their family or society (Xu et al., 2015).
The campaign approached to wide array of population by providing assistance
in several different languages, 24x7 helpline and campaign centres in all the
cities of Australia so that instant support could be provided to the people
affected with smoking disorder (Quit now, 2018). Further, the campaign
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400285 Public Health 2018 – Assignment 1
website was designed appropriately so that while surfing the website users
can understand the benefits of giving up smoking and can quit their habit with
the support of helathcare expert professionals (Quit now, 2018). The Quit Now
campaign approach could be divided in 4 parts in which educational
campaign, medical intervention, informative sessions and health promotional
campaign were important (Quit now, 2018).
The content and strategy of the campaign was determined by the national
Tobacco Campaign Media in which the licencing of the campaign materials,
reports of researches conducted about the conduction of the campaign, the
advertisement materials and the details of the locations for organisation of
campaign were determined (Caperchione et al., 2012). Depending on that the
areas were chosen for creation of campaign offices where the number of
community affected with smoking disorders were higher as well places where
people were most unaware about the deleterious effects of smoking (Koh &
Sebelius, 2012).
The campaign primarily focused on ideological and social orientation where
the political aspect was also an important stakeholders as they were unable to
control such emergence of smoking habit among young population (Jha et al.,
2013). Therefore, the social democratic model that was included in the
campaign distributed the authority to a number of non-governmental
organisations so that besides government, those organisations can also
provide support to communities or individuals who are not able to give up their
smoking habit, which is isolating them from their society and family (Abascal et
al., 2012). Further for the campaign promotions, awareness programs and
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400285 Public Health 2018 – Assignment 1
educational sessions the campaign used self-volunteers and employed
volunteers and provided them with training so that while communicating with
the people, they are able to convince them about the benefits of quitting
smoking and support them in their health and wellbeing attainment (Koh &
Sebelius, 2012).
Therefore, the approach of the campaign was educating people about benefits
of quitting smoking and harmful effects of smoking (Harris, Balsa & Triunfo,
2015). Besides these they were also taught about the ways they can use the
governmental help provided to them for their health attainment (Xu et al.,
2015). Further the campaign provides them with 24x7 support with
telecommunication, direct support through their offices in different cities, in
their preferred language and emphasises on the educating and increasing the
knowledge of people who are affected with smoking related disorders so that
they can quit smoking with a positive drive and self-confidence (Jha et al.,
2013).
Analysis of campaign
While analysing the campaign, it was observed that the Quit Now campaign is
primarily aiming towards educating people about adverse effects of smoking and
making them aware about the beneficial effects of smoking (Quit now). For this
purpose they focused on four aspect of advertisement which were as follows:
 providing people with quitting smoking related toolkit,
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400285 Public Health 2018 – Assignment 1
 making them aware of the health benefits of quitting smoking
 “Quit for you and quit for two” so that they can become part of the society.
 Share their own smoking related story so that others could be aware and
influence dot quit smoking (Quit now, 2018).
These advertisements were published using television commercials, radio,
print media and outdoor and online advertisements in several social media so
that maximum of the youth target could be reached (Xu et al., 2015).
Further analysis depends on the campaign effectiveness and the effectiveness
depends on the:
 Decreased rate of teen and adult smokers in Australia from 2014,
 Success of the campaign in educating people about the adverse effect of
smoking and benefits of quitting smoking.
 Retention of the workers and volunteers working in the campaign
 Usage of governmental aids and non-governmental support properly to
reduce the number of smokers (Quit now, 2018).
therefore as per Health.gov.au (2018), the findings revealed that the rate of
smokers decreased from 16.9% to 14% in 2016 that determined the
effectiveness of this campaign in making people aware of quitting smoking and
its health benefits. Besides the educational sessions helped people to spread
the benefits within their society so that a majority of people could be saved from
these public health interventions (Caperchione et al., 2012).
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400285 Public Health 2018 – Assignment 1
Future action
The methodology of this helathcare campaign was similar to that of the majority
of helathcare campaigns in the world and with its social democracy and
ideological theoretical approaches, an increased population was able to connect
to the process (Heldman, Schindelar & Weaver, 2013). Educational session,
Practical responses to the issue and training sessions to quit smoking was an
effective strategy for this helathcare campaign as Hootman, Helmick and Brady
(2012) determines that educational sessions are one of the most effective
strategies using which a major community could be provided with informations
that help them to change their habit or preferences to improve their current state
(Caperchione et al., 2012). Therefore, besides having several minute issues
such as lack of motivation, psychological help to people for quitting smoking, it
provided a conceptual framework to promote a critical public health issue using
which a large section of the society could be asked to change their faulty
personal preferences.
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400285 Public Health 2018 – Assignment 1
References
Abascal, W., Esteves, E., Goja, B., Mora, F. G., Lorenzo, A., Sica, A., ... &
Harris, J. E. (2012). Tobacco control campaign in Uruguay: a population-
based trend analysis. The Lancet, 380(9853), 1575-1582.
Caperchione, C. M., Vandelanotte, C., Kolt, G. S., Duncan, M., Ellison, M.,
George, E., & Mummery, W. K. (2012). What a man wants:
understanding the challenges and motivations to physical activity
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journal of men's health, 6(6), 453-461.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC. (2013). Health-care provider
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Harris, J. E., Balsa, A. I., & Triunfo, P. (2015). Tobacco control campaign in
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Health.gov.au. (2018). Department of Health | Smoking prevalence rates.
Retrieved from
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/
tobacco-control-toc~smoking-rates
Heldman, A. B., Schindelar, J., & Weaver, J. B. (2013). Social media
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400285 Public Health 2018 – Assignment 1
Hootman, J. M., Helmick, C. G., & Brady, T. J. (2012). A public health approach
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Quit now. (2018). National Tobacco Campaign media. Retrieved from
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The Heart Foundation. (2018). Smoking statistics. Retrieved from
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World Health Organization. (2015). WHO global report on trends in prevalence
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Xu, X., Bishop, E. E., Kennedy, S. M., Simpson, S. A., & Pechacek, T. F. (2015).
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