New drive to beat smoking in Rotherham

A GROUP which aims to end smoking in Rotherham has relaunched to help its members tackle the health problem.

Rotherham Tobacco Alliance — whose members include Rotherham Borough Council, NHS Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group, The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust and Yorkshire Smoke Free, South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue and Voluntary Action Rotherham — says it will revisit its priorities with the aim to achieve the national vision of creating a “Smokefree generation by 2025”.

The Alliance aims to help its members tackle the impact of smoking across the borough by tapping into joint resources.

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As part of the relaunch, the Alliance is working on the three themes of Prevent, Reduce and Quit to enable its members to align their tobacco control strategies.

Cllr David Roche, Rotherham Borough Council’s Cabinet member for public health and chair of the Rotherham Tobacco Alliance and Rotherham Health and Wellbeing Board, said: “Improving people’s quality of life and health is a key priority for us.

“I am therefore really pleased that a number of major partners have come together to relaunch the Alliance.

“One of our aims is to work more closely together to encourage people to quit smoking and support those that make that choice.”

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Yorkshire and the Humber reported the highest proportion of successful quitters — 56 per cent — with Rotherham achieving 3,199 quitters for 2014/15 against the England average of 2,829.

In Rotherham, only 18.1 per cent of adults smoke but the habit remains the major cause of preventable death and harms not just smokers but the people around them.

Dr Julie Kitlowski, chair of NHS Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), said: “We are keen to work together with all our partners to continue to improve the health of Rotherham people.

“Our three main causes of death are circulatory, respiratory and cancer. Smoking is a major factor contributing to the development of these three conditions.

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“Helping people to stop smoking is the most important thing that we can do together to help our people live longer healthier lives.

“One action we are taking is that we are looking at encouraging our own staff not to smoke, as one of the many ways to improve their own health as part of our healthy workforce initiative.”

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