How sex, age and education determine the potential impact of mass media campaigns: Results of the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Netherlands Project

The Scottish Government launched a tobacco control strategy in 2013 with the ambition of making Scotland tobacco smoke-free by 2034. However, 17% of the adult population in Scotland smoke cigarettes. This study aimed to provide insight into why policies are successful or not and provide suggestions for future policy actions. Individual interviews with ten tobacco control experts were conducted and the results were analyzed using thematic analysis. Key successes included strong political leadership, mass media campaigns, legislation to address availability and marketing of cigarettes and tobacco products, and legislation to reduce second-hand smoke exposure. Challenges included implementing policy actions, monitoring and evaluation of tobacco control actions, addressing health inequalities in smoking prevalence, and external factors that influenced the success of policy actions. Key suggestions put forward for future policy actions included addressing the price and availability of tobacco products, maintaining strong political leadership on tobacco control, building on the success of the ‘Take it Right Outside’ mass media campaign with further mass media campaigns to tackle other aspects of tobacco control, and developing and testing methods of addressing inequalities in cigarette smoking prevalence. The findings of this study can inform future tobacco control policy in Scotland and have relevance for tobacco control policies in other countries.

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Associations between tobacco control mass media campaign expenditure and smoking prevalence and quitting in England: a time series analysis

Tobacco Control ◽

10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-053662 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 27 (4) ◽

pp. 455-462 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Mirte A G Kuipers ◽

Emma Beard ◽

Robert West ◽

Jamie Brown

Keyword(s):

Smoking Cessation ◽

Mass Media ◽

Tobacco Control ◽

Smoking Prevalence ◽

Moving Average ◽

Government Expenditure ◽

Success Rates ◽

Media Campaigns ◽

Quit Attempt ◽

Quit Attempts

BackgroundIt has been established that mass media campaigns can increase smoking cessation rates, but there is little direct evidence estimating associations between government expenditure on tobacco control mass media campaigns and smoking cessation. This study assessed the association over 8 years between mass media expenditure in England and quit attempts, smoking cessation and smoking prevalence.MethodsAutoregressive integrated moving average modelling with exogenous variables (ARIMAX) was applied to monthly estimates from the Smoking Toolkit Study between June 2008 and February 2016. We assessed the association between the trends in mass media expenditure and (1) quit attempts in the last two months, (2) quit success among those who attempted to quit and (3) smoking prevalence. Analyses were adjusted for trends in weekly spending on tobacco by smokers, tobacco control policies and the use of established aids to cessation.ResultsMonthly spending on mass media campaigns ranged from nothing to £2.4 million, with a mean of £465 054. An increase in mass media expenditure of 10% of the monthly average was associated with a 0.51% increase (of the average) in success rates of quit attempts (95% CI 0.10% to 0.91%, p=0.014). No clear association was detected between changes in mass media expenditure and changes in quit attempt prevalence (β=–0.03, 95% CI –2.05% to 2.00%, p=0.979) or smoking prevalence (β=–0.03, 95% CI –0.09% to 0.03%, p=0.299).ConclusionBetween 2008 and 2016, higher monthly expenditure on tobacco control mass media campaigns in England was associated with higher quit success rates.

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