As 2024 comes to an end, the Geographic Health Equity Alliance (GHEA) proudly celebrates a series of community victories in commercial tobacco control. These achievements mark significant progress in creating healthier environments and ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to lead a healthy life.
Smokefree Policies are Prevention
According to the Surgeon General, smokefree policies play an important role in protecting the health of everyone in your community. There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke, and even brief exposure can cause immediate harm. Here’s how comprehensive smokefree policies can make a difference:
- Protect Everyone from Secondhand Smoke: These policies help protect everyone from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, which can cause serious health issues, including heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory infections.
- Encourage Smoking Cessation: Smokefree environments make it less convenient to smoke, offering that extra bit of time to allow people who smoke and are trying to quit overcome cravings. These policies create supportive surroundings that help individuals break their dependence on nicotine.
- Prevent Youth Smoking: By reducing the visibility of smoking and limiting social opportunities to smoke, these policies help prevent young people from starting to smoke.
- Improve Health Outcomes: Studies have shown that smokefree laws lead to reductions in hospital admissions for heart attacks and other health issues.
Community Success Stories
Over the past year, GHEA and CADCA provided training, technical assistance (TA), and subject matter expertise on evidence-based practices to several state and local tobacco control programs and partner coalitions to implement strategies in their communities that protect the health of everyone.
Workplaces that voluntarily adopt tobacco free policies and communities that pass population-level smokefree policies are taking an important step towards reducing secondhand smoke exposure for everyone. We are proud to highlight three coalitions that have educated their communities about the value of smokefree policies which protect everyone from the dangers of secondhand smoke exposure.
- Casey County, Kentucky: Lee’s Chicken restaurant recently adopted a voluntary smokefree policy. The Casey County Drug Free Communities Coalition has worked hard to educate the community on the harms of secondhand smoke and evidence-based strategies that can address these harms.
- Noel, Missouri: This year, the city of Noel adopted a local smokefree parks ordinance and a local bar adopted a voluntary smokefree policy. The Noel CHANGE Team was instrumental in educating the community on the positive impact that smokefree strategies have on community wellbeing. Read more about the city’s success in an article titled, “Quitting smoking is tough in rural Missouri.”
- Salem, Missouri: This year, the city of Salem adopted a smokefree ordinance for local government-owned buildings. The Healthy Dent County Prevention Coalition has played an important role in educating the community on smokefree evidence-based practices.
GHEA and CADCA’s support was key in helping coalitions learn about the harms of secondhand smoke and the evidence-based strategies available to address it. The successes of the past year are a testament to the power of community engagement and the effectiveness of community coalitions in creating healthier communities for everyone. Each achievement is a step forward in our shared mission to protect public health. Here’s to continued progress in the coming year!
