Top End Tobacco Project

The project includes:

• base line surveys of tobacco use in each community with follow-up
• ongoing measurement of tobacco sales
• support for community-developed strategies to reduce and prevent tobacco use
• improved access to Nicotine Replacement Therapy
• employment of local research workers
• provision of regular feedback to each community and key stakeholders
• support for capacity building of local health workers         

Baseline surveys were undertaken June 2008 – February 2009.Preliminary data show up to 77% of the 400 community members interviewed identified themselves as current smokers. More than half of these smokers are thinking about or actively trying to quit. Community members have expressed the need for greater community-based quit support.

Following consultation with community members, culturally and conceptually appropriate survey feedback is taking place through presentations at public meetings, to clan and family groups, to service providers and workplaces. To date this, along with the baseline survey, has stimulated the development and implementation of community-specific intervention strategies. These include:

• assisting to build capacity in local health workers to deliver brief interventions and provide quit support,
• quit competitions and developing local language tobacco resources.
• Hand-held expired carbon monoxide monitors have proven extremely successful in both verifying self-reported smoking status and creating opportunities for brief interventions in each community.