Smoke Free North East campaign wins award

Jul 3 2009 by Helen Rae, The Journal

THE country’s first regional office for tobacco control has won a prestigious national award.

Fresh Smoke Free North East scooped the illustrious Chief Medical Officer’s Public Health Awards 2009 for its work in tackling smoking.

The office, set up five years ago to reduce smoking rates in the North East, received gold at the awards ceremony at the Royal College of Physicians in London.

The CMO Awards were set up to recognise teams, people and projects who have made a massive impact on helping to improve public health in England.

Coun Nick Forbes, Chair of the Tobacco Regional Advisory Group, said: “This is an incredible achievement and reflects the enormous contribution Fresh has made to changing attitudes towards smoking in the North East.

“Ultimately it’s about helping people. Every person who doesn’t smoke is saving their loved ones a lifetime of worry, and saving themselves ill health and the risk of dying far too early.” But he added: “Smoking still kills thousands of people every year, 10,000 children in our region smoke and it is still our greatest cause of inequality in health depending on where someone lives.

“We still have a lot of work ahead of us in making smoking history for our region’s children.”

The North East had the biggest reduction in smoking nationwide between 2005 and 2007, from 29% of people smoking to around 22% - a drop of around 135,000 fewer people by the time England went smoke free.