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Examines the long-term effects of two Australian community antismoking campaigns that used television advertising to set the community agenda. Finds that, at the beginning of the campaigns, there was an immediate 2 percent drop in male and female smoking prevalence, followed by a 1.5 percent decline per year among males. (FMW)

Smoking initiation is a key behaviour that determines the future health consequences of smoking in a society. There is a marked difference in smoking patterns around the world, driven by initiation rates. While a number of high-income countries have seen smoking prevalence decline markedly from peak, many low-income and middle-income countries appear to still be on an upward trend. Unlike cessation where changes are limited by nicotine dependence, rates of smoking initiation can change rapidly over a short time span. Interventions that can be effective in achieving this include increases in the price of tobacco products, mass media anti-smoking advertising, smoke-free policies, smoking curricula in schools, restrictions on marketing opportunities for the tobacco industry as well as social norms that lead to restrictions on adolescents' ability to purchase cigarettes. Comprehensive tobacco control programmes that aim to denormalise smoking behaviour in the community contain all of these interventions. Rapid reductions in smoking initiation in adolescents have been documented in two case studies of comprehensive tobacco control programmes in California and Australia. Consistent and inescapable messages from multiple sources appear to be key to success. However, the California experience indicates that the rapid decline in adolescent smoking will not continue if tobacco control expenditures and the relative price of cigarettes are reduced. These case studies provide strong additional evidence of the importance of countries implementing the provisions of the Framework Treaty on Tobacco Control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A community antismoking campaign began in Sydney, Australia in 1983, and in Melbourne in 1984. These campaigns purchased prime-time television advertising spots to set the community agenda. An intense effort was made to ensure that Antismoking activities were maximized at the school, organizational, and community level. Smoking prevalences in both cities from 1981 were fitted with a statistical model to identify any underlying trend, to assess any immediate impact, and to assess the longer term effect of continuing to conduct such campaigns, i.e. to identify any change in the underlying trend. During the years before the antismoking campaigns, there was no observable trend in smoking prevalence in either city. At the beginning of the campaigns, there was an immediate drop of more than two percentage points in male and female smoking prevalence in both cities. Thereafter, a decline of about 1.5 percentage points per year was observed among males. No post campaign trend was observed in smoking prevalence for women in either city. These data support conducting coordinated community campaigns to reduce current smoking prevalence. (Am J Public Health 1990; 80:565-569.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data on smoking prevalence since 1974 are presented for the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Norway and Sweden. During this period, sex-specific prevalence has decreased in all the countries, studied, with the exception of Norway, where women showed an increase. There are also a considerable decline in uptake of smoking by the young over this period, suggestion that the observed decline in prevalence is likely to continue. In the United States, the rate of decline in adult smoking prevalence has been linear. This linear pattern is probably similar in prevalence in most other countries studied, with the notable exception of Australia, which demonstrated no change for the majority of the period. Among the six countries studied, the United States had neither the lowest smoking prevalence nor the fastest rate of decline over the period. Differential patterns of change infer that the successful public health interventions in some countries are not being applied in others. While the lack of change in Australia prior to 1983 is surprising, this was followed by a sizable drop in smoking prevalence for both higher and lower educational group in conjunction with the introduction of mass media-led antismoking campaigns. Most of the other countries report an ever increasing gap in prevalence between higher and lower educational groups. These findings suggest that all countries might benefit from a greater exchange of antismoking ideas and public health action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the findings of a cross-sectional study evaluating the effectiveness of children drug awareness programs external to the school. A Life Education Centre (LEC) program was initiated by the non-profit organization LEC in Australia to prevent drug uptake and usage among children. The program intends to develop children's skills to refuse drugs and provide motivation to apply these skills by raising self-esteem among them. The LEC program was effective in terms of process evaluation. Children showed great understanding of what they learned in the program.

The study investigated whether the effective mass media-led antismoking campaigns in Australia had the traditional differential effect across educational levels. Our population surveys included random samples of 12 851 people before the campaign and 11 609 several years after the campaign had started. No statistically significant differences were found in quitting across education levels in three of the four subgroups. Mass media-led antismoking campaigns may play an important role in getting the antismoking message to the less educated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author discusses a research paper which analysis the effectiveness of implementing smoke-free policies on teen smoking in Australia using representative triennial state wide surveys. It is given that the paper was significantly used by the by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as an evidence for analyzing the effectiveness of smoke-free policies. He also reflects on the comparison between home smoking restrictions and work place policies.

Background: Evidence from systematic reviews confirms that speech and language interventions for people with aphasia during the chronic phase after stroke (>6 months) improve word retrieval, functional communication, and communication-related quality of life. However, there is limited evidence of their cost-effectiveness. We aimed to estimate the cost per quality-adjusted life year gained from 2 speech and language therapies compared with usual care in people with aphasia during the chronic phase (median, 2.9 years) after stroke., Methods: A 3-arm, randomized controlled trial compared constraint-induced aphasia therapy plus (CIAT-Plus) and multimodality aphasia therapy (M-MAT) with usual care in 216 people with chronic aphasia. Participants were administered a standardized questionnaire before intervention and at 12 weeks after the 2-week intervention/control period to ascertain health service utilization, employment changes, and informal caregiver burden. Unit prices from Australian sources were used to estimate costs in 2020. Quality-adjusted life years were estimated using responses to the EuroQol-5 Dimension-3 Level questionnaire. To test uncertainty around the differences in costs and outcomes between groups, bootstrapping was used with the cohorts resampled 1000 times., Results: Overall 201/216 participants were included (mean age, 63 years, 29% moderate or severe aphasia, 61 usual care, 70 CIAT-Plus, 70 M-MAT). There were no statistically significant differences in mean total costs ($13 797 usual care, $17 478 CIAT-Plus, $11 113 M-MAT) and quality-adjusted life years (0.19 usual care, 0.20 CIAT-Plus, 0.20 M-MAT) between groups. In bootstrapped analysis of CIAT-Plus, 21.5% of iterations were likely to result in better outcomes and be cost saving (dominant) compared with usual care. In contrast, 72.4% of iterations were more favorable for M-MAT than usual care., Conclusions: We observed that both treatments, but especially M-MAT, may result in better outcomes at an acceptable additional cost, or potentially with cost savings. These findings are relevant in advocating for the use of these therapies for chronic aphasia after stroke., Competing Interests: Disclosures Drs Kim and Cadilhac report an educational grant from Moleac unrelated to this work paid to their institution. Dr Cadilhac reports education grant from Boehringer Ingelheim and Amazon Web Services unrelated to this work paid to her institution. Dr Godecke reports service as President for Aphasia WA