Stop Smoking Research To Assist Bay of Plenty Mental Health Provider

Identifying how a Bay of Plenty mental health provider could help service users stop smoking is the focus of a Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology summer research scholarship.

Toi Ohomai Bachelor of Community Health student Kathy Brown is exploring the ‘lived’ experience of being a smoker, and finding out what support could assist them to reduce or end their smoking habit.

Vincent House Recovery Trust is a mental health service in Te Puke which supports clients to live independently. Its parent trust, Vincent House, provides social housing primarily for service users, so provides a unique environment to work towards its vision of becoming smoke free by 2025, in line with the Government’s target.

While smoking cessation has been shown to play a significant role in improving mental wellbeing, and smoking nationally has decreased, smoking rates remain high for people with mental health conditions. Vincent House General Manager Jeff Orr said the research will help the service identify the most constructive ways to support clients in reaching their goals around smoking cessation. The aim is to create an environment where smoking cessation is the easy choice, he said.

“We’re aiming to bring in initiatives that not only save them money but also lead to greater stability and wellbeing, and of course, better health. Ideally we’d like to support them to quit for good, but for some it’s deeply ingrained, so we’re finding what we can do to help them cut back.”

Empowering individuals on smoking cessation goals

During a student placement at Vincent House in 2017, Kathy helped the service make changes to its smoking policy to limit communal smoking areas on site and discourage tenants asking for cigarettes from each other. She also collected baseline data on the number of tenants who smoked, the frequency of their habit as well as a cigarette butt count around the housing facility. This morphed into a summer research project to study the impact of the policy changes and look in-depth into what individuals want.

“Part of my research has involved following up the initial survey to find out how people felt about the policy changes,” said Kathy. “But we also wanted to hear the individual ‘lived’ experience of being a smoker and I’ve found many tenants felt empowered to talk about that, from their view. This is really important ground work so we can understand what’s going on for the tenants and how Vincent House could support new programmes in the future.

“There’s not a ‘one size fits all’. There’s a policy in place, but this is more about working one-on-one to support individuals to reach their goals.”

As well as individual support, Kathy hopes the research will help inform how other programmes – other than just smoking – are run and supported at Vincent House.

Jeff Orr says he’s looking forward to hearing what impact the new initiatives have had and what cessation or alternative programmes – such as vaping groups – Vincent House could introduce with sector funding.

“We’ve already put the initial research out to other providers and I expect this new body of work will generate interest and have some flow-through into the wider smoke-free initiative,” he said.

Fresh start on new degree course

Now starting the third and final year of her degree, Kathy, 55, is in the first cohort of students studying towards Toi Ohomai’s Bachelor of Community Health. Health and Humanities Lecturer Naomi Hesseling-Green says it’s the first undergraduate degree of its kind in the country and was developed after requests from employers wanting an undergraduate degree focused on public, community and occupational health. Graduates could work as educators, health promoters, researchers and policy-makers or in hands-on roles as health workers and advisors.

Kathy had originally trained in nursing and midwifery and worked as an independent midwife for eight years. She left the workforce 16 years ago to care for her sons – two of whom have autism – and with one now in permanent residential care, she has had to return to the workforce.

“I’ve had to start again but it’s more about health promotion now,” she said. “I initially did a Level 4 Foundation Studies course to prepare me for tertiary study and I’ve really loved the learning in Community Health; putting it all together has been challenging though. This degree is based on enquiry learning, so you’re taught to be researching all the time – you gain the skills to know how to keep learning, which is really critical in today’s world.”

Kathy, and Toi Ohomai’s other summer scholarship recipients, will present her findings at the Bongard Centre on Thursday, 21 March.