SmokeCheck is starting in NSW!

The SmokeCheck Program is designed to provide AHWs with information and skills in delivering smoking cessation programs to their clients.

Over the next two years we are planning to work with and deliver this program to Aboriginal Medical Services and mainstream services throughout NSW. The aim is to reach all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Workers, as well as clinical staff who encounter Indigenous clients.

The full program consists of two workshops:

• one-day workshop for Health Workers, to assist them in using the SmokeCheck Program. • two-hour workshop for managers and administrators, to discuss the organisational support needed to deliver SmokeCheck intervention routinely to clients.

This project has the full support of the Minister for Health, and is being overseen by an Advisory Committee comprised of representatives of the AH&MRC, Collaborative Centre for Aboriginal Health Promotion, NSW Health, the Australian Centre for Health Promotion and academics from the University of Sydney.

If you work in NSW we would like to invite you and your organisation to participate in the SmokeCheck Program. Please contact us to to further discuss the program in more detail and to possibly arrange a suitable date for the workshops in your area. If you would like any further information regarding SmokeCheck, please contact Hannah Nancarrow on (02) 9351 5129 or smokecheck@health.usyd.edu.au

Tobacco smoking is a major public health problem for Indigenous (and other) Australians. Tobacco smoking is more than twice as common amongst Indigenous people as other Australians: 50% of Indigenous people aged 18 years and more are daily smokers. However, we do not know whether current Indigenous tobacco control activities are making an impact on smoking.  

Phase two will commence later, in July 2007, and run until February 2009. Commencement of phase two will depend on acceptable progress of phase one. Funding of phase two has been sought separately from NHMRC, on advice from the CRCAH. If unsuccessful, we would seek this funding from CRCAH. This project will attempt to establish a sustainable and unobtrusive monitoring and feedback system using tobacco consumption data from remote community stores and six-monthly audits of tobacco control. We will use this data to describe both local trends in tobacco consumption to better inform the public health response to Indigenous tobacco smoking and to provide the framework for future evaluations of tobacco control activities.

Queensland Health's SmokeCheck program aims to encourage and support Indigenous Health Workers and other health professionals to use culturally effective tobacco brief interventions to:

The project was developed to raise awareness about ETS and promote the smoke-free household and car message amongst parents and carers’ living in the Central Sydney area. It was also developed to encourage women who smoke while breastfeeding to quit.

The campaign has been developed to encourage Aboriginal people to make more attempts to quit smoking, through the sharing of successful quitting stories. The stories of local people living in each region of Western Australia including the metropolitan, Great Southern, Pilbara and Kimberley regions have been recorded.

This project was developed to encourage Aboriginal smokers to quit for World No Tobacco Day 2005. A series of culturally appropriate health promotion strategies and smoke-free resources were developed for Indigenous people living in the south west area of Sydney.

A local Community Elder, who had been a non-smoker for more than 15 years, was approached and asked to tell his story. A poster with a photograph of the Elder, and the message "Our next generation needs you… quit smoking today!", and a postcard with smoking and health information and cessation services were developed and promoted. The Elder was also involved in Koori radio talks about his personal experience of quitting smoking, and information stalls at the Aboriginal Medical Service, Redfern.

The project partners included the Health Promotion Service of the Sydney South West Area Health Service (SSWAHS), the Aboriginal Elder, Aboriginal Housing Company, Stolen Generation Men Network, Koori Radio and Aboriginal Medical Service, Redfern.

The project was funded by NSW Health for World No Tobacco Day.

For further information about this project and permission to redevelop the poster and postcard etc., contact Sharon Minniecon, Aboriginal Health Promotion Officer at the Health Promotion Service, SSWAHS, on (02) 9515 9056 or minnis@email.cs.nsw.gov.au