Beyond the Tobacco War – What’s Next in Prevention and Protection?
On January 30th, the BC Healthy Living Alliance hosted the Beyond the Tobacco War – What’s Next in Prevention and Protection webinar. This webinar was attended by a wide range of professionals working in both the research and service delivery fields. Your Keeping in Touch team attended to gather information that would be relevant to CAPC, CPNP and AHS programs.
Dr. Joan Bottorff, Director of the Institute for Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention at UBC Okanagan, spoke about introducing the lens of gender to smoking cessation programming. She noted that tobacco companies have been using gender as a key marketing strategy for decades, but that this lens has not been focused on as much by the tobacco control sector.
The Families Controlling and Eliminating Tobacco Program (FACET) program is committed to “finding innovative ways to support tobacco reduction for pregnant and postpartum women and new fathers.” Its goals are to:
- support young families in their efforts to become smoke free
- develop and distribute effective gender-appropriate resources to assist pregnant and postpartum women and new fathers in their efforts to reduce or quit smoking
- promote knowledge translation between researchers and community
Through their research, they have found that smoking is often a key factor in heterosexual couple dynamics, and that these dynamics continue into pregnancy and post partum. They looked at how expectant fathers either supported or undermined the efforts of their partners to eliminate or reduce smoking during pregnancy and postpartum. In the end, they found very few co-quitters.
They found that after they became fathers, men became more likely to consider the effects of their smoking on their parents and baby, and be more inclined to consider quitting smoking. This shift in masculinity included a greater desire to become positive role models for their children.
FACET found that focusing on fathers would have multiple benefits for the family:
- Fathers would be in a better position to support women’s efforts to reduce or eliminate smoking
- Programs focusing on fathers would support men’s health
- Focusing on fathers would lead to the creation of more smoke-free homes for children.
The Right Time, The Right Reasons booklet was developed for expectant fathers and is based on the real-life experiences of expectant dads who are trying to quit smoking. You can download copies of this booklet here.
FACET also piloted the Dads in Gear program, a face to face program for dads that would focus on parenting, exercise and tobacco reduction. A website full of resources from this pilot project is currently under construction.
FACET has also developed a COUPLES AND SMOKING: What You Need to Know When You are Pregnant booklet that can be accessed on their website.
To learn more about the FACET program, visit their website.
You can also learn more about tobacco and gender by visiting the iTAG (Investigating Tobacco and Gender) website.