Preventing use of tobacco and helping those who utilize it to stop can have continuing benefits for people and for the public health in general. Advanced practice nurses can engage in activism and prevent Big Tobacco from further disabling the health of many communities by developing and implementing tobacco management programs to assist to reduce or prevent the use of tobacco. These programs can make use of taxation, mass-media campaigns, restrictions and easily accessible and effective behavioral analysis and tobacco ending medications. The programs can provide services to different target audiences, including young individuals, people with co morbid health issues, those of different socioeconomic status and ethnicities, and women (Diem & Moyer, 2015). A comprehensive approach to tobacco management results in changes that affect the whole population, from the person to the community level, by addressing the social, political economic, cultural and environmental aspects that sustain the using and not using of tobacco.
Another way that advanced practice nurses can engage in activism and prevent Big Tobacco from further disabling the health of many communities is through the use of Evidence-based best practices for tobacco control (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2014). Programs for tobacco control reduce use of tobacco at the populace level by building tobacco-free outdoor and indoor areas, limiting the access of young people to tobacco products, restricting tobacco marketing, having continuous counter marketing campaigns, increasing the price of tobacco products, and offering easily available tobacco termination services and products.
References
Diem, E. & Moyer, A. (2015). Community and public health nursing: learning to make a difference through teamwork. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press.
Stanhope, M. & Lancaster, J. (2014). Public health nursing: population-centered health care in the community. Maryland Heights, Missouri: Elsevier Mosby.
Running head: THE ROLE OF HEALTH ACTIVISM BY NURSES IN CONTROLLING TOBACCO USE Carlos Ortiz Florida National University Prof. Crevecoeur 11/13/2017 THE ROLE OF HEALTH ACTIVISM BY NURSES IN CONTROLLING TOBACCO USE Practicing nurses can engage in health activism as form of communication to empower communities to mitigate the devastating health effects evident in many health facilities. One way in which this can be achieved is through nurses becoming active members in coalition groups that campaign against tobacco use. They can then use their healthcare experience to craft attention-drawing advertisements to be broadcasted in mass media and social media on why the masses need to avoid tobacco use ( Hamilton ,2014). They can also design effective posters to be displayed in health facilities and other public places highlighting the steps a tobacco user can take to quit the practice. Further, such campaign groups can organize public presentations in public gatherings, schools, churches and other learning institutions to sensitize the public on the dangers of using tobacco in its various forms and ways of quitting when even addicted. In the political arena, practicing nurses can engage legislatures while seeking office and present their proposals on what they could like to be passed into law in the quest to mitigate negative effects of tobacco use. In addition, they can utilize their advocacy abilities to push for policy changes by the various policy makers including as the total retail outlets, increasing the number and area of ‘no smoking zones’ and pushing for exponential escalation of tobacco taxes. The change in policy may also seek to limit the advertisement of tobacco products in mass media while making it a condition to explicitly display warning signs on the packets containing the products. Moreover, the nursing activism groups can involve people who have quit tobacco use to testify to the public spreading the message of the need to end tobacco use (Smith,,2015). References Hamilton, N. A. (2014). American social leaders and activists. Infobase Publishing. Smith, S. A. (2015). The Pernicious Weed: Anti‐Tobacco Sentiments in Periodical Literature, 1800–1870. Historian, 77(1), 26-54.
