Social Marketing for Smokefree Aotearoa 2025: Reminding, Reinforcing, and Changing Social Norms

Friday, May 21st, 2021 | carra86p | No Comments

Janet Hoek, Andrew Waa, Nick Wilson, Lindsay Robertson, Phil Gendall, George Thomson*

The NZ Government’s Action Plan to realise the Smokefree 2025 goal has signalled a more important role for social marketing. Social marketing can facilitate and reinforce population-level behaviour change introduced by new policies, thus modifying social norms, which also support long-term improvements in health outcomes. In this blog, we consider the role of social marketing in supporting the Smokefree 2025 goal and review strategies the Government could implement.

Continue reading

Getting the Marketing Mix Right: A Commentary on NZ’s Forthcoming Vaping Regulations

Thursday, October 1st, 2020 | tedla55p | No Comments

Janet Hoek, Lindsay Robertson, Jude Ball, Richard Edwards, Anaru Waa

On August 11 2020, the NZ Parliament passed legislation that extends existing regulation of tobacco and herbal smoking products to vaping products (or electronic nicotine delivery systems [ENDS] and heated tobacco products (HTPs]. The new Act represents an important step in managing access to ENDS and HTPs, and regulating how these are marketed.  In this blog, we summarise some of the Act’s key provisions before exploring how the regulations, still to be made available for consultation, could further strengthen the Act’s ability to protect young people. We also consider how other countries considering similar legislation could extend the approach taken in NZ.

Continue reading

How should we manage the harm caused by tobacco product waste?

Friday, June 14th, 2019 | tedla55p | No Comments

Professor Janet Hoek and Emeritus Professor Philip Gendall

Annual consumption of cigarettes now exceeds five trillion, with around four trillion butts littered every year. These cigarette butts cause major environmental damage and impose significant clean-up costs on local authorities. Although tobacco companies have framed smokers as responsible for butt litter, recent debate has focused on the tobacco industry’s role in creating tobacco product waste (TPW) and its responsibility for managing this problem.  We recently examined public perceptions of TPW in New Zealand and allocation of responsibility for creating and managing it.

Continue reading

Patterns of Declining Smoking in NZ – But More Action Needed by the New Government

Monday, November 20th, 2017 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Nick Wilson, Frederieke Sanne van der Deen, Richard Edwards, George Thomson, Anaru Waa, Tony Blakely

Just published results from the NZ Health Survey indicate ongoing declines in smoking for Māori and for European New Zealanders. In this blog we comment on the possible reasons for these trends and describe recent work on how progress could be accelerated.

Continue reading

NZ’s Quitline Service is value-for-money: But how does it compare with other tobacco control actions in a league table?

Monday, August 21st, 2017 | Kate Sloane | 1 Comment

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Nhung Nghiem, Dr Cristina Cleghorn, Dr Frederieke Sanne van der Deen, Prof Tony Blakely

We have just published a journal article on the cost-effectiveness of NZ’s Quitline service (including its associated promotion in the mass media). The study found that this intervention package is likely to be an effective means to generate health gain, address health inequalities and save costs for the NZ health system. But in this blog we also compare the New Zealand Quitline intervention with other tobacco interventions using our just launched BODE3 Interactive League Table, and find that whilst the Quitline is a good thing to do, much more health gain is possible through other tobacco control interventions.

Continue reading