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Your Choices...Your Health

North Shore quit smoking project for Asian people wins accolade


25 October 2007

A project helping Asian smokers on the North Shore to quit has been highly commended in the 2007 New Zealand Health Innovation Awards. The awards, run by the Ministry of Health and ACC, recognise excellence in innovative projects that improve health services to New Zealanders.

“The Asian Smokefree Communities (ASC) programme reflects everything positive the Primary Health Care Strategy sets out to do,” says Clinical Services Manager of Harbour Health PHO, Janice van Mil.

Support and access


Central to the strategy was that health care should not be about treating illness, only. The changes in the health system showed people how to improve their own health, supported them in staying healthy and offered help to those with ongoing problems. It also ensured they had access to health services they may not have had access to previously.

“The ASC programme gives us links with the community, we are developing a community workforce (of co-ordinators), it gives access to a vital health service for a group who previously did not have that access and it engages the community in managing their own health.”

Research


Mrs van Mil said 2005 research conducted in the Waitemata District’s Asian community showed 10 percent of its population were smokers and did not have equitable access to smoking cessation programmes or resources.

Asian smokers told researchers they did not feel comfortable using standard smoking cessation services, like the Quitline, mainly because of the language barrier. They also felt the available resources did not meet their needs in either language or content.

So, in a first for New Zealand, three health organisations combined to do something about it.

Who's involved?


Waitemata District Health Board, Harbour Health PHO, (one of the largest in the country) and Auckland Regional Public Health collaborated under the Primary Health Care Strategy to co-fund a programme to help Asian smokers to become smokefree.

The community was asked what the new programme should look like. From this came the idea of home visits by female co-ordinators to support both the households and smokers to become smokefree.

In another New Zealand first, ASC combined a smokefree environments programme with a smoking cessation programme.

“Helping to make a home or car smokefree gives us a connection with the smoker who may then look at trying to quit altogether,” said Mrs van Mil. “For instance, we had a non-smoking woman approach us for help because she had five smokers in her household and she was constantly ill. Five months after we initially visited that home to help them make it smokefree, four of the five smokers had quit.

“Whatever it takes to support someone’s cessation attempt, we will try to cater for. Our co-ordinators are invited to visit homes or workplaces, to discuss creating smokefree environments. Clients can also come to Harbour Health’s offices, if that’s more convenient. Follow up is tailored to suit the families’ or individual’s needs.

“The ASC programme has culturally-appropriate, translated resources to support both smoking cessation and smokefree environments”.

Data collection


Another first is the rigorous data collection that is part of the programme.

“It was important we had an understanding of whether our methods were successful and if not, how we could make them more successful. For instance, because of our data collection, we know there are different times of the year when clients are more at risk of relapsing than at other times. Chinese nationals who go home for Chinese New Year are at higher risk of starting to smoke again, for example. So we know we need increased support before this time.”

An evaluation of the first six months operation of ASC (May-November 2006) found that 42 percent of people in the programme had quit smoking. The national average of quitting success in any one year is less than 10 percent.

“An anonymous survey of ASC’s clients found more than 92 percent of them said they would recommend the programme to family and friends.

“It’s a really exciting and successful programme that we are all very proud of.”


Related links
2007 New Zealand Health Innovation Awards

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Page last updated: 7 November 2007


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