Understanding diversity to help New Zealanders quit smoking

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Understanding diversity to help New Zealanders
quit smoking

• Michele Grigg
• Research Manager
• The Quit Group

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The Quit Group

• A charitable trust funded by the Ministry of
  Health to help New Zealanders stop smoking

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Our audience very varied!

• Smokers are made up of people who are
• different genders
• different ages
• at widely varying stages of thinking about or
  wanting to quit smoking
• different ethnicities
• different personalities.

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The challenge

• How do we provide a service that effectively
  targets and caters for such a varied group of
  people?
• How do we help them think about and/ or take some
  action towards quitting smoking?

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Addressing diversity

• By offering a diverse service, and advertising it
  in a diverse manner

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Research working out what we do know

• Smokers more likely to be from lower
  socio-economic groups
• Maori have a particularly high smoking rate at
  50, as do Pacific peoples at 33

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Research working out what we do know

• Smokers aged 25 to 44 more likely to be thinking
  about quitting, and to quit successfully when
  they try
• People need different types of support

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Use knowledge to set realistic goals

• Offer a service which
• targets general population smokers, with a
  particular focus on most at risk groups
• has a variety of different quit smoking services
  available
• can respond to the individual needs of smokers.

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Quit smoking services

• Three main services
• Quitline
• Quit Cards
• DHB support and assistance.

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The Quitline

• Free telephone support line
• support and advice
• written quit smoking information
• access to cheap nicotine patches and gum.

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Quit Cards

• A programme that enables health providers with an
  interest in smoking cessation register to
  distribute exchange cards for patches or gum to
  smokers wanting to quit

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DHB Support

• Support and assistance to help DHBs set up quit
  smoking programmes

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Understand your audience
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Understand your audience

• Pre-testing and research essential but dont
  need to blow the budget

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Target audience in variety of ways

• Television advertising
• Print and radio advertising
• Unpaid media

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Television advertising

• Most cost-effective way of reaching diverse
  national audience
• Screen adverts at times when priority audiences
  are most likely to be watching
• Performs variety of functions
• generates calls to the Quitline
• raises awareness of smoking health effects
• supports tobacco control efforts generally.

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Television advertising
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Television advertising

• Every cigarette is doing you damage threat
  appeal
• Its about whanau supportive and empathetic,
  targeted towards Maori
• Secondhand smoke Take the smoke outside
  behaviour change

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Print and radio advertising

• Identify need for further targeted campaigns,
  such as
• increasing number of Pacific callers to the
  Quitline
• encouraging Maori relapse callers to re-contact
  the Quitline.

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Pacific specific

• Poster, print and radio ads
• Backed by unpaid media advertising Pacific Quit
  Advisors at the Quitline, fluent in range of
  Pacific languages

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Pacific specific
For quit smoking advice and support, call the
Quitline 0800 778 778.
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Maori relapse callers

• Paid advertorial
• Unpaid media
• success stories

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So, does all this work?

• Attract between 33,000 to 35,000 callers per year
  to the Quitline
• On average 70 are NZ European, 20 Maori, and
  3 Pacific peoples
• Provided support and advice and/or NRT to 192,000
  smokers since November 2000, including 40,000
  Maori
• Helped 23,000 people quit in three years

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So does all this work?

• Over 400 health providers registered on the Quit
  Cards programme
• Helped nine DHBs develop smoking cessation
  programmes, and are continuing to promote the
  importance of smoking cessation programmes to
  doctors and nurses

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• The price of the democratic way of life is a
  growing appreciation of people's differences, not
  merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich
  and rewarding human experience.
• Jerome Nathanson

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Understanding diversity to help New Zealanders
quit smoking

• Michele Grigg
• Research Manager
• The Quit Group
• michele.grigg_at_quit.org.nz