Browse Sections

• Education
• Special reports

No butts, quit the fags!

23/ 4/2008

AN Advertiser campaign to help folk improve their health and well-being is all set to build on the good work of one GP’s practice in Gamesley.

The I Love Me campaign will feature a series of articles over the coming months which won’t be advocating gruelling, daily workouts at the gym or making impractical, radical lifestyle changes.

Instead, the onus will be on small, steady changes building on the work of smoking cessation clinics like Dr Alan Dow’s surgery on Cottage Lane, Gamesley.

The estate was once branded the worst — from a health point of view — for expenditure on cigarettes in a national survey in 2004. Residents were said to spend more on cigarettes every year than anywhere else in the UK. But the smoking quit rate at the surgery is said to be above the national average, with more than half kicking the habit at the practice, the first to offer smoking cessation in Glossop, Tameside and Oldham.

Nurse practitioner Gillian Morgan said the message seems to be getting through.

"We’re still seeing a lot of people wanting to quit smoking, between four and eight people a month. We’re only a small practice. We see them one-to-one and then usually try to see them every two to four weeks while they are going through the process.

"We give them as much support as possible, with the aim of them becoming a non-smoker at the end of the 12 weeks."

Dr Anne Rothery, medical director of the Tameside and Glossop Primary Care Trust (PCT), said the trust was happy to support the campaign, which is being co-ordinated by the Greater Manchester Association of PCTs.

"We are delighted to be working with both the Tameside and Glossop Advertiser in this worthwhile campaign."