Dr Foster Intelligence | Case studies

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Success stories

Our service is now far more accessible and many more people are aware of it.

Maria Ioannidou Smoking Cessation Service Coordinator

Lifestyle insights

Redbridge PCT wanted to begin its smoking cessation awareness campaign by engaging, in the first instance, with local smokers whose needs could be met most easily. This way, the insights that were gathered could be fine-tuned in order to create lasting benefits for more hard-to-reach groups within the comunity.

Lifestyle analysis, using Experian’s Mosaic Public Sector™ classification, identified the three groups of the local population that contained the largest numbers of smokers. They were successful members of the Asian community living in suburbs; singles and childless couples taking over attractive, older suburbs; and second-generation settlers from diverse communities within multicultural inner city terraces.

Common characteristics of these groups were that they were light or medium smokers, had educational qualifications and worked in well-paid jobs. Internet, telemarketing and text-messaging were identified as the communication methods to which they were most receptive.

Solution

Dr Foster Intelligence was commissioned to provide further market research that focused on the available service and how it was meeting quitters' needs.

The research used:

Smoking cessation data to identify the types of people already accessing the service
Geodemographic analysis and existing public health intelligence to identify areas where demand outstripped supply
Focus groups and in-depth, first person interviews with front-line staff to better understand attitudes and behaviours

Focus groups revealed that knowledge of the local smoking cessation services was patchy and that the most commonly identified motivations for smoking were stress and socialising. The focus groups also highlighted the ineffectiveness of traditional methods of communication in reaching its target audience.

"As the campaign unfolded, it became clear that our marketing techniques needed improving," explained Maria Ioannidou, the smoking cessation service coordinator at Redbridge PCT. "The smoking cessation advertisements in local papers and the posters we used were meaningless to a large percentage of the younger population. The focus groups helped us understand what sort of messages would attract a younger population."

Participants said they would like a non-judgemental service that offers one-to-one sessions or groups with similar people (eg same-sex groups), a serivce that is easily accessible, at times and places that fit in with their lifestyles.

Outcome

While the PCT thought that it knew of all the local areas with a high prevalence of smoking, the project team was able to identify several other areas that had a high proportion of smokers.

"Some of the findings surprised us," said Ioannidou. "We discovered an area of high [smoking] prevalence that we had previously regarded as low risk. As a result of the campaign, we have redesigned the smoking cessation service and changed the way we promote it. We have started making services more accessible by running Saturday clinics and rolling groups where people can register and attend whenever they need to. We have also designed a new website where people can find out more about the local stop smoking services."

With the health campaign having generated a significant amount of media interest, Ioannidou explained some of the ground-breaking technology that they introduced.

"We use tools such as age-progression software, where we take a digital photo of the smoker and show them what they will look like in 30 years’ time as both a smoker and a non-smoker. We also use the lung-life machine, which is when we input the smoker’s age, gender, weight and height, and then ask them to expel a full breath as quickly as possible into the mouthpiece. The machine then calculates the age of their lungs based on their capacity. People find this information fascinating."

Since the campaign, the PCT has seen a substantial rise in the number of people registering for smoking cessation services.

"Our service is now far more accessible and many more people are aware of it. In the long term, the campaign will prove to be cost effective because we now know which areas of the population to target and how best to promote the service. This also helps with meeting our targets."

As part of Redbridge’s continuing improvements, the trust plans to identify more areas of risk and other sectors of the community.

"We want to improve access to the service for difficult-to-reach populations, such as pregnant smokers under the age of 21," added Ioannidou, "and continue expanding and improving the service."

Tool

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