scholarly journals The Transformation of UK Tobacco Control

2019 ◽  
pp. 84-103
Author(s):  
Paul Cairney
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Tobacco Control ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Behavioural Change ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Smoking Ban ◽  
Policy Environment ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Evidence Based Model

The UK has one of the most comprehensive set of tobacco controls in the world. For public health advocates, its experience is an ‘evidence-based’ model for tobacco control across the globe, and for alcohol and obesity policies in the UK. In Scotland, policy-makers often described the ‘smoking ban’ as legislation so innovative that it helped justify devolution. These broad and specific experiences allow us to identify and explain different types of success. The UK’s success relates to smoking ‘denormalization’ and reduction, and the explanation comes partly from the ways in which policy-makers framed tobacco as a public health epidemic and produced a policy environment conducive to policy change. The ‘smoking ban’ success relates to the implementation and behavioural change that is lacking in most other countries. The explanation comes from the ‘window of opportunity’ for specific policy change, and the design of the policy instrument backed by the prioritization of its delivery by key public bodies. The overall lesson, particularly for advocates of evidence-informed policymaking, is that evidence only ‘wins the day’ when it helps reframe debate, produce a conducive policy environment, and actors exploit ‘windows of opportunity’ for specific reforms. In most countries, this did not happen.

Knowledge Co production and Behavioural Change, Collaborative approaches for promoting low carbon mobility

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Barr ◽  
Gareth Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Behavioural Change ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Productive Process ◽  
Emergent Literature ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Personal Travel

Behavioural change has become regarded as a key tool for policy makers to promote behavioural change that can reduce carbon emissions from personal travel. Yet academic research has suggested that promoting low carbon travel behaviours, in particular those associated with leisure and tourism practices, is particularly challenging because of the highly valued and conspicuous nature of the consumption involved. Accordingly, traditional top-down approaches to developing behavioural change campaigns have largely been ineffectual in this field and this chapter explores innovative ways to understand and develop behavioural change campaigns that are driven from the bottom upwards. In doing so, we draw on emergent literature from management studies and social marketing to explore how ideas of service dominant logic can be used to engage consumers in developing each stage of a behavioural change campaign. Using data and insights from research conducted in the south-east of the UK, we outline and evaluate the process for co-producing knowledge about low carbon travel and climate change. We illustrate how behavioural change campaign creation can be an engaging, lively and productive process of knowledge and experience sharing. The chapter ends by considering the role that co-production and co-creation can have in developing strategies for low carbon mobility and, more broadly, the ways in which publics understand and react to anthropogenic climate change.

The contemporary self in tobacco control: exploring the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eluska Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Tobacco Control ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Smoking Ban ◽  
Political Speeches

This chapter is set in the context of the introduction of an outright ban on smoking in the workplace in 2004, an initiative that is widely regarded by Irish politicians, public health and anti-smoking advocates as a story of success, despite ‘common sense’ commentaries at the time suggested that the ban would be too radical a proposal.Drawing on commentaries from broadsheet newspapers and political speeches from the time, this chapter analyses the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland as a successful exercise in ‘the conduct of conduct’ (Foucault, 1982) by exploring the types of conduct that were embraced and promoted in the context of the debates over the ban. Informed by the centrality of notions of rational, responsible and civilized selfhood in contemporary public health and health promotion discourses, the chapter reveals how notions of what came to be promoted as rational, responsible and civilized behaviours, and their flipside, irrational, irresponsible and uncivilized ones, were central to the exercise of power. It also reflects on how the regulation of smoking became interlinked with social and moral processes, and how some of these played a symbolic role in promoting boundaries between different social groups.

Prevention Policy and Public Health

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-154
Author(s):  
Paul Cairney ◽  
Emily St Denny
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Public Health Policy ◽  
Prevention Policy ◽  
Policy Problem ◽  
Tobacco Policies ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Acute Healthcare

Health policy is the traditional home of prevention policies. Public health is at the heart of policies designed to improve population health, and perhaps reduce health inequalities, often through changes in behaviour at an early age. Public health policy tends to be a hub for advocates of EBPM. In theory, healthcare and public health are symbiotic, particularly if early public health interventions reduce demand for acute healthcare. However, in practice, public health is an exemplar of the wide gap between expectations for ‘evidence-based’ prevention policy and actual outcomes. To demonstrate, first, we apply our theoretical approach, outlined in Chapters 1 to 3, to present a broad examination of health policy and the role of prevention within it, considering what a window of opportunity for prevention policy within a complex system means in relation to health and public health policy. Second, we show that the UK and Scottish governments have described different policy styles, but faced and addressed the ambiguity and complexity of preventive health policy in similar ways. Third, our comparison of broad prevention versus specific tobacco policies shows why substantive policy change is more apparent in the latter: there is a clearer definition of the policy problem, a more supportive environment for meaningful policy change, and more windows of opportunity for specific policy changes. These three conditions are not yet fulfilled in the broader prevention agenda.

scholarly journals Origins of tobacco harm reduction in the UK: the ‘Product Modification Programme' (1972–1991)

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (e1) ◽  
pp. e12-e18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Elias ◽  
Pamela M Ling
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Harm Reduction ◽  
Tobacco Control ◽  
Tobacco Industry ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
British Government ◽  
Tobacco Harm Reduction ◽  
Parliamentary Debate ◽  
Product Modification ◽  
The Uk

ObjectiveTo better understand the current embrace of long-term nicotine maintenance by British governmental agencies and tobacco harm reduction by several leading British public health organisations, describe the context and deliberations of the UK’s first formal tobacco risk reduction programme: ‘Product Modification’.MethodsAnalysis of previously secret tobacco industry documents, news archives and Parliamentary debate records.ResultsFrom 1972 to 1991, the British government sought to investigate safer smoking through the ‘product modification programme'. The Independent Scientific Committee on Smoking and Health (ISCSH) advised the British government on these efforts and collaborated with the tobacco industry, with which government then negotiated to determine policy. The ISCSH operated from four industry-backed premises, which contributed to the ISCSH’s support of safer smoking: (1) reduced toxicity indicates reduced risk; (2) collaboration with the tobacco industry will not undermine tobacco control; (3) nicotine addiction is unavoidable; (4) to curtail cigarette use, solutions must be consumer-approved (ie, profitable). These premises often undermined tobacco control efforts and placed the ISCSH at odds with broader currents in public health. The product modification programme was abandoned in 1991 as the European Community began requiring members to adopt upper tar limits, rendering the ISCSH redundant.Policy implicationsEndorsements of reduced harm tobacco products share the same four premises that supported the product modification programme. Current tobacco harm reduction premises and policies supported by the British government and leading British public health organisations may reflect the historical influence of the tobacco industry.

Should Your State Have a Public Health Law Center?

2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (S4) ◽  
pp. 58-59
Author(s):  
Jill Moore ◽  
Marice Ashe ◽  
Patricia Gray ◽  
Doug Blanke
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Tobacco Control ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
National Network ◽  
College Of Law ◽  
Control Community ◽  
Strategic Advice ◽  
Public Health Practitioners

The Tobacco Control Legal Consortium is a national “network” designed to tap expertise about tobacco control legislation and to leverage existing resources. Based at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, the Consortium supports local counsel with research, strategic advice, sample materials and pleadings, and amicus briefs. The Consortium’s priorities are to support capacity nationally, to offer education, and to perform outreach activities to a variety of audiences.The Consortium seeks to advance policy change by making legal expertise more readily available to the tobacco control community. Legal issues are inevitably involved in policy change. The Consortium does not provide legal representation, but conducts analysis and research. They publish on important and emerging legal issues as well as on specific cases, assist in the development of legislation, and train public health practitioners and policy makers on recurring legal issues.

scholarly journals Two heads are better than one: Australian tobacco control experts’ and mental health change champions’ consensus on addressing the problem of high smoking rates among people with mental illness

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Della Rowley ◽  
Sharon Lawn ◽  
John Coveney
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Tobacco Control ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Success Rates ◽  
Smoking Reduction ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Government Services ◽  
People With Mental Illness

Objective The aims of the present study were to explore the beliefs of Australian experts in tobacco control and change champions working in mental health and tobacco cessation, and to identify measures for addressing the problem of high smoking rates for people with mental illness. Methods Qualitative interviews were undertaken to explore participants’ views, and the Delphi technique was used to achieve consensus on ways in which the problem would be best addressed. Results This consensus centred on the need for leadership within the mental health system. The problem was reconceptualised from being solely the responsibility of the mental health sector into an issue that requires the combined resources of a partnership and shared leadership between government and non-government services, public health leaders, policy makers and people with mental illness and their families. Conclusions Collaboration would raise the priority of the issue, reduce the debilitating effect of stigma and discrimination within the mental health sector and would place smoking reduction firmly on the political and public agenda. A recovery-orientated focus would increase the skill base and be inclusive of workers, families and carers of people with mental illness who face smoking issues on a daily basis. Reconceptualising this as an issue that would benefit from cooperation and partnerships would disrupt the notion that the problem is solely the responsibility of the mental health sector. What is known about the topic? Rates of smoking have remained high for people with mental illness despite population-wide public health strategies successfully reducing smoking rates in the general population. For people with mental illness, the benefits of quitting smoking for both their mental and physical health are overshadowed by concerns about the complexity of their needs. There is a lack of knowledge about how smoking cessation support can be improved to increase success rates in smokers with mental illness. What does this paper add? The present study is the first to bring a cross-sector lens of public health and mental health ‘experts’ together to discuss the reasons for the high rates of smoking among people with mental illness and to obtain their shared agreement on solutions. This Australian-specific study analyses participants’ responses to the problem representation and reveals what the issue is considered to be, where action should occur and how the problem should be resolved. What are the implications for practitioners? For the Australian context, there is a need for leadership and a consistent smoke-free message about the benefits of not smoking. Staff working in mental health require training in providing brief interventions, motivational interviewing and pharmacological support. Joining together as a partnership of government and non-government services, including public health leaders and policy makers, and involving people with mental illness and their families, would benefit all concerned.

scholarly journals Social networks as a public health tool - “Non-smoking bars and restaurants”

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽  
Author(s):  
A Grujičić ◽  
S Mladenović Janković ◽  
D Matijević ◽  
G Tamburkovski ◽  
M Marković
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Tobacco Control ◽  
Second Hand Smoke ◽  
Smoking Ban ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Health Initiatives ◽  
The Media ◽  
Internet Portals ◽  
Second Hand Smoking

Abstract Issue/problem In Serbia, 34,7% of adults are smokers. Although Framework Convention of Tobacco Control was signed in 2005, there are measures still not applied. Implementation of the existing laws on tobacco control is inconsistent. Inadequate regulation is particularly related to catering objects - restaurants and cafes, which contributes to a general tolerance towards smoking. Although 84% of the population is aware of the harmful effects of second-hand smoking, complete smoking ban in restaurants and cafes is supported by only 19% and 14%, respectively. Description of the practice The initial idea was to identify smoke-free catering objects, as well as those that properly obey current laws. This led to creation of a Facebook page with a map of such objects in Belgrade. Another goal was to raise awareness about the effects of second-hand smoking and encourage people to articulate their needs, but also to emphasize the significance of this topic to the media and other relevant parties. Effects In two years, the page reached nearly 4000 organic followers. It is daily used for sharing news and study results and for discussing tobacco control related topics. Some posts reach up to twenty thousand Facebook users. The map includes over 100 strictly non-smoking catering locations. The page has been further publicized via popular internet portals, newspapers, TV channels, specialized magazines and foreign tourist guides. Lessons The page has revealed the suppressed need of the majority to express the intolerance to second-hand smoke. Even though most catering owners are hesitant to declare smoke-free areas, fearing a negative business impact, others see the page as a good promotion channel. The initiative has also been recognized by different parties with an idea of future joint action. Key messages Social networks are a powerful tool to broadcast public health initiatives and encourage people to take actions. Social media communities have potential to create a persistent influence on stakeholders to lobby for new regulations.

From Tobacco to Obesity Prevention Policies: A Framework for Implementing Community-Driven Policy Change

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 856-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Walter ◽  
Kelly Dumke ◽  
Ariana Oliva ◽  
Emily Caesar ◽  
Zoë Phillips ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Tobacco Control ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Obesity Prevention ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Prevention Policies ◽  
Community Residents

Efforts to reverse the obesity epidemic require policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) change strategies. Despite the availability of evidence-based and other promising PSE interventions, limited evidence exists on the “how-to” of transitioning them into practice. For the past 13 years, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has been building capacity among community residents and other stakeholders to create effective community coalitions and to implement well-designed policy strategy campaigns using an evidence-based approach to policy change, the policy adoption model (PAM). Implementing a phase-based approach to policy change, the PAM was initially used to support the passage of over 140 tobacco control and prevention policies in Los Angeles County. Following these successes, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health applied the PAM to obesity prevention, operationalizing the policy process by training community residents and other stakeholders on the use of the model. The PAM has shown to be helpful in promoting PSE change in tobacco control and obesity prevention, suggesting a local-level model potentially applicable to other fields of public health seeking sustainable, community-driven policy change.

Renewable Energy: Policy Dynamics at the Macro-, Meso-, and Micro-Levels

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-64
Author(s):  
Sebastian Sewerin ◽  
Tobias S. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
General Direction ◽  
Instrument Type ◽  
Policy Dynamics ◽  
The Face ◽  
Analysis Of Dynamics ◽  
The Uk

Renewable energy is a distinct policy field encompassing both economic and environmental considerations. How these are balanced in the face of the 2007–8 economic crisis is an important question relating to the general stickiness of environmental policies. In this chapter, we investigate long-term policy dynamics across both EU and non-EU countries and across three levels of policy change. Using an Index of Policy Activity (IPA) dataset of 562 policies, we analyse the general direction of overall change in policy mixes (macro-level), the dynamics of policy instrument type use (meso-level), and change to policy design (micro-level). We find that, while the crisis marks a turning point in the speed of policy change, the direction of policy change alters only in Ireland and the UK—namely towards policy dismantling. However, we show that dismantling and expansion unfold differently at the policy meso- and micro-levels, adding further nuance to the empirical analysis of dynamics of policy change.

An Exploration of Doping in Recreational Welsh Rugby An Ethical Analysis of Policy Responses

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Luke T.J. Cox
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Harm Reduction ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Alternative Policy ◽  
Recreational Athletes ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Rugby Players

Doping is widely misperceived as a problem limited to elite athlete populations. Yet evidence for the occurrence of doping at recreational levels can be found from a variety of sources across a range of sports. Understanding this phenomenon is made problematic because of the difficulties in accessing these athletes. The ambiguity in motivations for doping at this level has led researchers and policy makers to consider whether the problem is more one of public health rather than simply performance-related cheating in sport. This thesis explores the motivations, knowledge, perceived harms, perceptions of anti-doping policy, and the drug use practices of recreational Welsh rugby players, where prevalence is disproportionately high in the UK. Semi structured interviews with recreational Welsh rugby players (n=13) and gym users (n=9) from the South and West Wales region were conducted. Four key themes emerged: (i) the use of doping substances for aesthetic reasons; (ii) a concern for body image that can trigger doping; (iii) a range of problematic risk-taking behaviours; and (iv) lack of concern for anti-doping policy and practice. Given the harms associated with doping, attention was paid to the problem of identifying whether the primary policy response should be driven by health or sport organisations. An alternative policy response within harm reduction is here considered, adapting a contentious framework from the ethics of self-harm. Three broad alternative policy proposals are critically presented in relation to doping in recreational sport: (1) to prevent it; (2) to allow it; and (3) to supervise it. Each model is rejected. Due to the seriousness of the harms associated with doping and the public health threat, it is argued that public health bodies must provide specialist harm reduction for recreational athletes and gym users within Wales, to better protect the health of recreational athletes and the general public.

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