Note: World Lung Foundation united with The Union North America. From January 2016, the combined organization is known as “Vital Strategies.”
(New York, USA) – On World No Tobacco Day, World Lung Foundation is supporting new tobacco control mass media campaigns in Albania, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, India, Mauritius, Philippines, Russia, and Ukraine. World Lung Foundation provided a mix of technical and financial assistance to governments in each country. The ads were all adapted from highly effective campaigns that were developed in New York City, Ireland or Australia, signaling a shift toward the globalization of tobacco counter-marketing.
India, Bangladesh and Mauritius are running the “Sponge” campaign, which was developed by the Cancer Institute New South Wales in Australia. It graphically depicts the amount of cancer-producing tar that collects in the lungs of an average smoker. The “Sponge” ads were rigorously tested in more than a dozen countries and were found to motivate smokers to try to quit.
Albania, Ukraine, the state of Gujarat in India and several regions in Russia and the Philippines are running New York City’s “Cigarettes are Eating You Baby Alive” campaign. These ads, developed by the Department of Health And Mental Hygiene, encourage adults to stop smoking by showing how cigarette smoke damages vital organs in the body. A second version shows that secondhand smoke causes severe health problems among babies and children that are exposed to secondhand smoke.
Bulgaria and two other regions in Russia are running Ireland’s “Smoke-Free Works – Pub” ad to inform citizens of smoke-free laws that protect employees from the dangers of second-hand smoke in workplaces.
These new campaigns highlight the increased use of mass media in tobacco control and the shift toward sharing and adapting materials that have been effective in other countries. Rigorous pre-testing and evaluation among smokers in 10 countries showed that such campaigns are effective in prompting quit attempts and bolstering support for smoke free policies. World Lung Foundation has developed an online resource for governments to access evidence-based materials quickly and at little or no cost, which has propagated the trend of content sharing and adaptation around the world.
Peter Baldini, Chief Executive Officer, World Lung Foundation, commented: “In effect, we are seeing the globalization of tobacco control content. This takes a page from the playbook of the tobacco industry which consistently promotes tobacco as healthy and fun in every country. We know now that people in every cultural context suffer the same negative consequences from smoking or second hand smoke and they respond to the same kinds of warnings. We are delighted to be part of this global counter-marketing effort.”
More than 170 governments are obliged to implement mass media campaigns as part of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), a global health treaty they have ratified. Mass media campaigns is one of the World Health Organization’s M-P-O-W-E-R (W=Warn) strategies to reduce tobacco consumption. MPOWER strategies are endorsed by the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, of which World Lung Foundation is a principal partner.