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Surveying all outdoor smokefree signage in contrasting suburbs: methods and results
Nick Wilson A B and George Thomson A
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A Department of Public Health, University of Otago Wellington, PO Box 7343, Wellington South 6021, New Zealand.
B Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Health Promotion Journal of Australia 28(3) 264-265 https://doi.org/10.1071/HE16079
Submitted: 8 July 2016 Accepted: 21 November 2016 Published: 19 January 2017
Background
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Background
Methods
Results
Discussion
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GO
Outdoor smokefree area policies are expanding internationally;1 [#R1] the practicalities of policy implementation include communication and enforcement.2 [#R2] In New Zealand, there is some public support for smokefree outdoor areas;3 [#R3],4 [#R4] however, awareness of existing smokefree policies is often low.5 [#R5],6 [#R6] The lack of effective signage may be a factor in this limited awareness.7 [#R7] Legislation requires the grounds of all school and early childhood centres to be smokefree at all times, and requires notices to this effect ‘prominently displayed at or immediately inside … every entrance to the premises’.8 [#R8] There is evidence that such legislation is effective9 [#R9],10 [#R10] but the appropriate use of the legally-mandated signage has not been well studied. There are no other New Zealand laws or local authority bylaws explicitly requiring smokefree outdoor areas (although worker safety laws could be considered relevant in some settings). Nevertheless, local government authorities often have non-legally binding educational policies that use signage to encourage people not to smoke in some areas (along with Council website information and publicity at the time of Council adoption of the smokefree policy). Given this background we aimed to pilot a survey method for studying the extent of smokefree signage for outdoor public places at a city suburb level.
Methods
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Background
Methods
Results
Discussion
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GO
For the study we selected two residential suburbs in the Wellington region; Karori (14 000 population, low deprivation), in the west of Wellington City, and East Porirua (comprising Ranui Heights, Porirua East, Cannons Creek, and Waitangirua; 15 600 population, high deprivation, with a large proportion of social housing). We chose these suburbs because of the contrasting levels of small area-based deprivation,11 [#R11] and similar population sizes. In both Wellington and Porirua Cities, there...