Strategies to tackle smoking

This section of our website is aimed at health workers who would like to help members of their community to quit smoking. It provides information and recommendations to assist the development of a plan of action, including links to online resources available both on and outside this website.

Multi-component community-based programs

 Many successful Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs that have been developed use a combination of best practice strategies and activities which have been tailored to suit the needs of the local community. Programs that successfully tap into communities will seek community participation in all stages of  a program's development, implementation and maintenance. This is likely to be particularly successful in small, integrated communities that have strong informal networks.

While there are already many examples of multi-component, community-based programs in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, these are not likely to produce measureable declines in smoking rates over the short-term. This is because individual smoking behaviour change is only likely to occur through the long-term exposure of individual smokers and communities to cessation messages and changes in tobacco culture and therefore programs will need to be funded over the longer-term (Ivers, Castro et al. 2006).