Leicester estate targeted in smoking blitz

A Leicester estate with one of the highest smoking rates in the country is to be targeted in a major drive to help people quit the habit.The plan is to persuade more than 5,500 smokers in New Parks to stub out their cigarettes by Christmas.About 40.5% of adults on the estate smoke – nearly twice the national average of about 22%.
From tomorrow, volunteers will be knocking on doors, visiting community groups and going into offices to try to encourage smokers to quit.They have been trained in "30-second intervention" – a method of trying to persuade people to do something without lecturing them.Volunteers will also be pounding the streets armed with leaflets and details on where smokers can get help to quit. A specially decked-out bus packed with information, help and advisers will also tour the neighbourhood.Called Lose the Smoker in You, the campaign is the first of its kind in the country.New Parks was chosen for the launch after drug company Pfizer, which has developed and paid for the campaign, invited people across the country to say why their neighbourhood deserved to benefit first from the project. New Parks beat two other finalists, in Lincolnshire and Liverpool.Louise Ross, NHS Leicester City's Stop! smoking manager, put forward New Parks.
She said: "It seemed the perfect place.
"It has the one of the highest rates of smoking in the country."A recent survey showed that more than half the smokers on the estate wanted to stop."Research by anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) revealed men and women in deprived social groups were much more likely to smoke than those who were better off.
New Parks is in the west of the city – an area in which one in three children have parents who are unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, according to the charity End Child Poverty.Ms Ross said the campaign would enable stop smoking advisers to be more "creative" in their attempts to get people to give up."I, and my staff, will do all we can to make sure it works," she said."We don't have a particular number of quitters in mind to judge success of the project.
"We want to see what works well."Smokers will also be given freebies, such as pedometers and water bottles, to encourage them to live more healthily.Pfizer would not say how much it was spending on the campaign because the information was said to be "commercially sensitive".The company manufactures the stop-smoking drug Champix, but will not be promoting it during the campaign.Television's Street Doctor Dr Jonty Heaversedge will be helping kick-off the campaign at a roadshow in the Salvation Army car park, in Aikman Avenue, tomorrow.It takes place from 9am until 5pm. Dr Jonty will be there from 10am until 2pm.