Note: World Lung Foundation united with The Union North America. From January 2016, the combined organization is known as “Vital Strategies.”
(January 14th, 2015, Beijing, China, and New York, USA) – World Lung Foundation (WLF) today congratulated the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) on the launch of a new mass media campaign that aims to discourage citizens from giving cigarettes as a gift to celebrate Chinese New Year. The campaign, which will run nationally through China CDC’s network while significant sub-national campaigns run in Beijing, Shenzhen and Yunnan province, focuses on a Public Service Announcement (PSA) and poster.
It was developed and implemented by China CDC with technical and financial support from WLF. They last collaborated on a similar “gift-giving” campaign in 2009 and 2010, with post-campaign research in two cities where people had been exposed to the campaign indicating a decrease in the number of people who reported they would buy cigarettes as gifts from 45 percent to 24 percent in Beijing and from 23 percent to 12 percent in Guangzhou.
The campaign is being launched to coincide with the run up to Chinese New Year and will run until the end of February 2016. The PSA and poster subvert the idea that giving cigarettes demonstrates respect, affection or blessing – graphically highlighting that giving cigarettes can cause illness and premature death to the recipient. Viewers are told: “You give your friends blessings, together with lung cancer and respiratory system ailments. You give your colleagues respect, together with heart disease, paralyzing strokes and (other) cardiovascular diseases. You give your loved ones care and affection, together with death. Giving cigarettes is giving harm.”
Sandra Mullin, Senior Vice President, Policy, Advocacy and Communication, World Lung Foundation, commented: “We congratulate China CDC on the launch of this campaign at such a critical time, just as the Chinese New Year holiday is fast approaching and gift giving is at its peak. We are delighted to support them in running this campaign, as we know from previous years that it will make a real difference to levels of knowledge around tobacco’s harms and reduce the number of people intending to gift cigarettes.
De-normalizing the giving and use of cigarettes is vital, given that tobacco kills more than 1.3 million people in China every year, and sickens and disables many more. In addition, these messages can help to increase support for and compliance with smokefree laws in cities like Beijing and Shenzhen. A reduction in smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke would be a great start for health in China’s new year.”
Local CDC offices and health education institutes will deploy the Public Service Announcement and poster across local media, including a selection of TV, radio, medical or healthcare system platforms (including hospitals), LED displays on buildings, lamp boxes on subway lines, Microblog and Wechat, according to local audiences and channels.
The burden of tobacco use in China
The Tobacco Atlas notes that more than 275,900,000 adults and more than 8,937,000 children continue to use tobacco each day in China. This includes 45.3 percent of men, 2.1 percent of women, 18 percent of boys and 0.5 percent of girls. Every year, more than 1,384,200 of China’s people are killed by tobacco-caused disease. Tobacco is responsible for 19.5 percent of adult male deaths and 11.9 percent of adult female deaths – more than the average in other middle-income countries. This suggests that women in China suffer a disproportionate burden of death and disease from exposure to secondhand smoke.
In addition, a paper recently published in The Lancet revealed that smoking initiation among men in China is happening at a younger age and that smokers continue to smoke for longer compared with previous generations, increasing their risk of disease and premature death. Unless significant advances are made in reducing tobacco use, the study predicts that one in three of all young men in China will eventually die from tobacco use, and smoking-related premature death – from conditions including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), lung cancer, stroke and heart disease – will claim two million lives every year by 2030.
Research has shown that mass media campaigns are among the most effective means to encourage people to stop using tobacco. Hard-hitting campaigns and images can compel tobacco users to quit, increase knowledge of the health risks of tobacco use, and promote behavior change in both smokers and non-smokers. It is featured in the World Health Organization’s M-P-O-W-E-R (W=Warn) strategies to reduce tobacco consumption. MPOWER strategies are endorsed and promoted by the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, of which World Lung Foundation is a principal partner.
The “Giving cigarettes is giving harm” PSA is available to view here and stills and transcripts from the PSA are available upon request.