Smoking and Public Health Initiatives

Introduction

Health issues are evoking the feeling of a constant headache, which will not end any time soon. They are responsible for millions of deaths in many places in the world. Health issues consist of diseases and health complications that arise due to poor habits or exposure to preventable risks. Smoking is one of the health issues that are most prevalent in the current century (Armstrong-Mensah, 2017). Smoking of tobacco is widely spread across the world, with over a billion of the world’s population being smokers. It is most common from individuals in the lower- or middle-income nations. Some countries have been able to tackle this health issue by introducing health promotional initiatives and policies that are effective while in other nations, smoking has significantly increased. This paper will look into smoking as a health issue. In the end, a health promotion care plan will be designed and evaluated after looking into smoking and its impacts. A conclusion will then be provided based on what will be discussed.

Background of Health Issue

Smoking is one of the biggest health challenges in the world. It is almost an epidemic by having led to diseases, disabilities, and death, with the use of tobacco being linked directly to millions of preventable deaths each year (Mabuza, 2020). Smoking is also not just a health concern that affects individuals but also it severely impacts on the society in general. It puts a healthcare burden on society, condemns families to poverty and reduces the level of productivity. There is significant evidence from numerous researches linking smoking to vascular diseases like stroke, subclinical atherosclerosis and coronary heart diseases. Also, there are respiratory diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia. In spite of all the dangers that smoking poses on human health there is still a considerably large number of people who continue to smoke. Out of all the people who smoke, 80% die due to the health issue – a rate that is higher than those dying from other health issues. The merits of smoking, such as revenue generation and employment, are outweighed by the damage it inflicts on individuals and society as a whole. As countries, communities, and the health sectors across the world become more aware of the dangers of smoking, they have become proactive in devising ways to fight its threats and keep generations safe and free from health risks. This has also prompted personal research on a care plan that can be able to promote health on smoking and help eradicate the dangers (Munafò, 2003).

The health promotion plan for policies and procedures, which can help in the prevention of smoking, will involve three main areas. These areas are the general public, the individual, and the community. The plan will seek to get in touch with the general public through mass media and social marketing strategies. Then it will aim to target the individual through peer education and motivational interviewing. Lastly, the community will be involved in the plan and the intention is to plan for community mobilization and impacting a change in the environment through the media. This plan takes into account the principles of introducing change in three crucial areas the individual phase, the societal norms and the socio-political area (Mabuza, 2020). The interventions will be implemented with a focus on changes in the environment and society first before focusing on the smokers as individuals who will make it much easier to apply and become successful. Engagement with various stakeholders is vital in coming up with a multiple intervention policy. Discussed below are the components of the policy.

The Plan

On an individual level, there will be peer education and motivational interviewing. Peer education comes in handy in effecting a change in smoking. It involves information sharing in groups or on a personal basis in a group that will be selected through matching characteristics demographically or in terms of the behavior patterns so as to target a change in the population that is smoking. This policy is derived from theories of behavior in relation to education, resource model, development, motivation, information and health (Edelman et al., 2017). It is useful in that it has a direct impact in making individuals quit smoking and can be readily accepted in the settings that it is to be applied as it does not deal with a huge group that is separated by thousands of issues. The next part of the policy will involve motivational interviewing. Motivational interviewing is an individual based directive approach that is aimed at stimulating a definite shift of behavior and sort out any emerging issues. Through this approach, the aim will be to develop discrepancy, show empathy, support self-worth and address resistance from those who indulge in smoking. This policy will mainly derive its purpose and functionality from the empathic process, social psychology, self-worth and cognitive dissonance. The forms of motivational interviewing that will be deployed are brief motivational interviewing, motivational enhancement therapy and consultations through telephones.

When it comes to the general public, I will focus on theatre, media advocacy and the use of mass media campaigns. Theatre is an excellent form of promoting health on smoking (Roig et al., 2019). The theatre is a great platform to be used to create awareness on health risks involved in smoking and get out the positive messages of good health. It provides a great plan as it pulls in the audience to the act of encouraging the actor who is passing on crucial information. I this method the actor will explore the set topics by finding a linkage between fiction and facts while demonstrating the message. It is based on the social cognitive theory and the drama theories that take into account the behavior of human beings as a way of interaction between personal aspects, the context and behavior. Furthermore, media advocacy will be an essential part of the plan to reach the general public. The aim of this is to create messages and issues surrounding smoking and advocate them through media as a platform. Information will be channeled through the media with the aim of changing the views and minds of the public to shun smoking. The advocacy will be centered on solid planning principles. With positive coverage of interventions developed there will be a positive impact on policy changes, news coverage, and a decrease in those involved in smoking. Lastly, there will be mass media campaigns. The plan will deploy mass media campaigns to expose the masses to messages that touch on smoking and its effects through newspapers, radios and televisions. There can be an outcome that will go either way, it will either impact negatively or positive shifts in health-related patterns or behaviors in the masses but it is a handy method that will be used to raise these health issues and fuel debate around it. The plan will be drawn from the theories of social influences also known as social learning theory (Munafò, 2003). The mass media campaign will target young people with antismoking messages as they are more exposed to the mass media. Researches that have been done before have reported positive outcomes from such campaigns recording great results in being successful in shifting the consumption of tobacco through smoking by various groups in the public domain. The assessment of how effective interventions through the mass media depicts the effectiveness of comprehensive programs on tobacco control in changing the behavior of adults who smoke. How long and intensive the campaigns influence the impact that they will have and this policy will be very aggressive in delivering the messages to the public (Slovic et al., 2001).

Focusing on the community with be the third and final approach to the plan of promoting health on smoking. This will be done through community mobilization, setting-based strategy and social marketing. Community mobilization will be developed to prompt a shift to the usual way that social issues are approached from the utility of different sophisticated interventions so as to help educate the community members on the dangers of smoking and why it is advised to live a healthy life by avoiding smoking. This will be done through associations and groups, educational entertainment teamwork and the participation of all the stakeholders in the community to help transform the city to the desired values. This will be done with a focus on social change, social capital and empowerment concepts. This method will be successful as previously conducted researches have indicated favorable outcomes in that there was a significant shift in patterns of smoking to lower levels and lower consumption of cigarette per capita. In studies where the community was used as the unit f evaluation, a positive change in smoking behavior was the outcome (La et al., 2013). This is considered worldwide to be one of the most effective ways of reducing smoking. The second part of the policy under the community will be making use of social marketing as a tool. Social marketing is defined as the systematic use of techniques and principles of marketing to communicate, come up with and deliver value with the goal of impacting a particular target audience to achieve set behavioral functions for the greater social good. This tool will look into a behavioral approach which will be useful to come up with future sustainable effect on the choices that people make. The policy will draw inspiration from behavioral theory. The social marketing method aimed at reducing the use of tobacco among the youth and the illegal sale of this substance will be deployed. It will also include pretesting and crafting fresh information marketing material that is consumer-friendly and support the cessation of smoking. Short messages texting interventions will be used to reach out to those smoking with positive messages and encouragement to quit the habit for the better good of themselves and everyone they love. Lastly, the setting based approach will be applied. This plan is derived from the assumption on health being a creation and lifestyle that people come up with and subject themselves to in their day to day lives and through the process, they acquire knowledge, love, and play and work (Gulanick et al., 2003). Health settings are a social setting or environment where individuals take part in the day to day activities leading to single factors and environmental context interacting to affect the health and wellbeing of the individuals. This paper`s approach to this issue is based on health promotion principles. It will aim to make sure that individuals have better control over and realize significant improvements in their health. The plan will target workplaces that offer the possibility of reaching a huge group of people in a bid to encourage them to quit smoking. The policy will target workers with group therapy provision, self-help materials, social support, individual counseling and nicotine replacement therapy. This will reduce smoking rates with minimal treatment or interventions. Incentive schemes will have a significant impact in reducing smoking rates (La et al., 2013).

Evaluation of plan

As much as peer education is a proven way of effectively controlling smoking, the policy will need to take into account the factors surrounding it that could have an impact on its success before implementation is done. These factors include the relationship between the peer educators and the ones being educated, the types of interventions that are deployed, supervision of the process and training that is appropriate. Creating the right environment is crucial for the successful implementation of this part of the policy. When it comes to the theatre method while it could be an excellent means for impacting long-term change, it is not yet established if there will be positive results in the promotion of habits that against smoking (Edelman et al., 2017). It is crucial that the content of the theatre is looked into from a professional point of view and the intercessions are made based on scientific research. Media advocacy was highlighted as a piece of the broader policy implementation in relation to providing a stage that issues related to policy can be raised. Despite this achievement, the limitation is that there needs to be more research done to make it a useful tool. It should be developed in the context of other methods such as community mobilization. In health promotion, community mobilization is essential for this plan to empower communities so as to get the desired change in the social settings is not just a sustainable policy but is a very effective method that will work correctly in delivering the intended target. When it comes to social marketing interventions, it is vital to always develop them in accordance with the setting and needs of different communities (Slovic et al., 2001). It will be essential to integrate specific horizontal and vertical interventions with social marketing so as to make the plan more effective and sustainable. Motivational Interviews can be applied broadly in medicine and specifically in smoking interventions. Even though previous researches done have come up with varying results, it appears to have a crucial influence in promoting a reduction in smoking. Future studies will need to look into the grey area in how motivational interviews are applied in different circumstances and people and the individuals that are best suited to offer this service best. Mass media should, in every plan, be part of the ways in which population health patterns can be improved. It is crucial under this policy to have precise testing and planning with the intended audience. Importance should be placed on small groupings of samples that one intends to implement the plan (Gulanick et al., 2003). Lastly, having a good understanding of health-promoting in various areas is crucial for putting in place the health promotion methods to run smoothly. It is essential that one is able to know what is needed in putting in place what needs to be executed and how important it is to do time to time evaluations.

Conclusion

Health promotion plays an essential role in the fight to reduce the ever-expanding health issue of smoking in the world. An all-inclusive and active awareness of the population that is done through health promotion plans plays a crucial role in preventing the rising incidents of smoking. Education of the masses is also important in passing valuable information that prevents initiation into smoking and deters those who are smoking from continuing with the act. With more health promotion efforts on how negatively smoking affects individuals, communities and the masses, in general, raise the intentions to quit smoking among the users. The world becomes a great place when every single individual takes care of their health. Most of these health issues that are being experienced from smoking that has been discussed in this paper to obesity and many others can be prevented and we can live a healthy life. Smoking is killing this generation and if this issue is not addressed, then we are not just to the upcoming generation that will sink into further topics of smoking and it will be too late to take action. The action plan directed towards reducing smoking highlighted in three phases above is convenient for any setting worldwide and will work if implemented to reduce smoking. There will be challenges but the evaluation phase provides possible solutions on how to approach and deal with the problems that might arise.

References

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In Roig, B., In Weiss, K., & In Thireau, V. (2019). Management of emerging public health issues and risks: Multidisciplinary approaches to the changing environment.

Slovic, P. (2001). Smoking: Risk, perception & policy. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.