Since last May, together with the celebration of World No Tobacco Day, ICO implemented the campaign Allunyem el tabac, promoted by the Catalan Network of Smoke-Free Hospitals (UCT). This campaign aims to move tobacco use away from the hospital entrances with the ultimate goal of reducing the visibility of tobacco, denormalizing tobacco use and raising awareness about the importance of smoking cessation.
Although the current Tobacco Law 28/2005, with its subsequent amendments, banned smoking throughout the whole hospital precincts, including the outdoor areas, people still smoke in front of the hospital entrances. This means that secondhand smoke can go inside the center and that tobacco consumption and cigarette butts on the floor are largely visible at the entrance doors, which damages the image of the hospital as health promotion center.
The campaign Allunyem el tabac has been designed in order to creating a tobacco-free area at the entrances so as to move tobacco consumption and visibility away. The goal is to raise awareness among population about the importance of quitting smoking. At the same time, it also wants to strengthen the exemplary role of health professionals working at the center as health-promoting agents.
Duran i Reynals Hospital, where tobacco control policies are promoted by ICO, has been one of the pioneering hospitals in implementing the campaign. The implementation includes actions such as clear signage at the entrances, delimitation of the perimeter around the entrances where it is advised not to smoke, moving ashtrays far away from the entrances, information to raise awareness among professionals about their role model and asking them not to go out to smoke with work clothes and dissemination of the campaign on social media.
We hope that the experience carried out at Duran i Reynals Hospital will also serve to encourage other centers in the Network who want to implement the campaign or at least some of the proposed actions. To this purpose, all materials created for the campaign, as well as counseling by the Catalan Network of Smoke-Free Hospitals, are at their disposal