World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Smoking Cessation and Treatment of Tobacco Dependence
"Quit to Win" Smoke-free Community Campaign
Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health (COSH) spares no efforts to promote the knowledge of smoking hazards, prevent youth from smoking and encourage smokers to quit smoking.
COSH has organized "Quit to Win" Smoke-free Community Campaign since 2009 to promote smoke-free messages and encourage smokers to quit. Collaborating with The School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong and Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), COSH successfully recruited over 1,000 smokers each year to join the contest and quit smoking.
The participants will be randomly assigned to different intervention groups and will receive a 3-month to 6-month follow up counseling by trained staff. Participants who quit smoking successfully and pass the biochemical validation will be eligible to join lucky draw to win fabulous prizes or to be invited to share their experiences on a television show.
Highlights
To strengthen community involvement, COSH has extended its collaboration with the District Councils and district organizations since 2012 to make the "Quit to Win" Smoke-free Community Campaign territory-wide. District-oriented activites have been organized and successfully mobilized the participation of the community. The Campaign has effectively promoted smoke-free messages and spread the concept of smoke-free lifestyle at community level. It also strengthened smoking cessation support in all 18 districts
Partnership with the media multiplies the promotion effect. Successful quitters will be invited to share their stories in the television programme which will build a role model and be effective in encouraging more smokers to quit. Smoking-free messages can also be transmited to every corner of the society.
"Quit to Win" commissions a professional team to provide smoking cessation counselling to participants and conducts research to build a sound and scientific base to understand the current smoking prevalence and effectiveness of different smoking cessation interventions. The findings help improve the existing cessation services.
Results
Studies showed that the Campaign provided an alternative platform for the smokers to seek cessation support in addition to the smoking cessation clinic. The Campaign has received overwhelming response and support from the public. The district-oriented activities have been proven to be an effective channel to approach smokers and encourage them to take their first step to quit smoking.
"Quit to Win" Smoke-free Community Campaign is one of COSH's annual signature campaigns and has successfully integrated scientific research and social marketing to raise public awareness on smoking hazards and smoking cessation.