Campaign approach
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 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.
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).
Analysis of campaign
The campaign approached to wide array of population by providing assistance in several different languages, 24×7 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 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 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 24×7 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).
Future action
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,
- 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).
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.
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 participation and healthy eating in middle-aged Australian men. American journal of men’s health, 6(6), 453-461.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC. (2013). Health-care provider screening for tobacco smoking and advice to quit-17 countries, 2008-2011. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 62(46), 920.
Harris, J. E., Balsa, A. I., & Triunfo, P. (2015). Tobacco control campaign in Uruguay: Impact on smoking cessation during pregnancy and birth weight. Journal of health economics, 42, 186-196.
Health.gov.au. (2018). Department of Health | Smoking prevalence rates. Retrieved from https://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 engagement and public health communication: implications for public health organizations being truly “social”. Public Health Reviews, 35(1), 13.
Hootman, J. M., Helmick, C. G., & Brady, T. J. (2012). A public health approach to addressing arthritis in older adults: the most common cause of disability. American journal of public health, 102(3), 426-433.
Jha, P., Ramasundarahettige, C., Landsman, V., Rostron, B., Thun, M., Anderson, R. N., … & Peto, R. (2013). 21st-century hazards of smoking and benefits of cessation in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine, 368(4), 341-350.
Koh, H. K., & Sebelius, K. G. (2012). Ending the tobacco epidemic. JAMA, 308(8), 767-768.
LILLARD, D. R. (2015). Smoking in Australia. Life-Course Smoking Behavior: Patterns and National Context in Ten Countries, 15.
Quit now. (2018). National Tobacco Campaign media. Retrieved from https://www.quitnow.net/
The Heart Foundation. (2018). Smoking statistics. Retrieved from https://www.heartfoundation.org.au/about-us/what-we-do/heart-disease-in-australia/smoking-statistics
World Health Organization. (2015). WHO global report on trends in prevalence of tobacco smoking 2015. World Health Organization.
Xu, X., Bishop, E. E., Kennedy, S. M., Simpson, S. A., & Pechacek, T. F. (2015). Annual healthcare spending attributable to cigarette smoking: an update. American journal of preventive medicine, 48(3), 326-333.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
