|
Using No Smoking Day to reach your ‘hard to reach’ smokers
Vishnee Sauntoo, Campaign Manager, No Smoking Day, London, UK and Leena Sankla, Director, Cardio Wellness, Reading, UK
Abstract
No Smoking Day is in its 25th year helping smokers who want to stop through its annual awareness campaign. The campaign focuses on social marketing methods to identify effective means of targeting smokers through various media such as newspapers, radio and online, as well as direct contact through health professionals, employers, community leaders and partnerships.
With more than 2,000 media mentions, No Smoking Day continues to enjoy extremely high levels of public awareness, particularly amongst high prevalence groups of smokers. Stop smoking services and other interested organisations use No Smoking Day events to publicise their services and recruit smokers.
The No Smoking Day campaign encourages participation in the Day for all smokers, with dedicated information and targeted communications designed to reach ethnic minorities and socially excluded groups.
This workshop will demonstrate how the No Smoking Day charity can help organisations to understand target groups and find more effective ways of reaching them, whether via health centres, religious venues or even local football teams.
No Smoking Day gives public health professionals the platform to reach out to the harder to reach smokers.
TOP
About the presenters
Vishnee Sauntoo joined No Smoking Day as Campaign Manager in January 2007. Her background is in Biotechnology and Science Communication. Before working for No Smoking Day, she managed media relations for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and prior to that worked in the sexual health field.
Leena Sankla is the co-founder of the Cardio Wellness Charity, which specifically focuses on health inequalities within the Black, Minority and Ethnic (BME) community. Leena has a counselling psychology background and is a stop smoking specialist. She is multilingual in a number of BME languages and her particular expertise is in reaching hard to reach groups. She has a long-standing knowledge of smoking and tobacco control, including tobacco chewing within the South Asian community and has been a special guest on National and Satellite TV and radio.
|
