Intervening against smoking in the workplace

Abstract

The workplace is an underused location for intervening against smoking. This may be because companies are not aware of the benefits of reducing smoking prevalence amongst employees or do not have access to information on how to set up and evaluate programmes. Few controlled studies of workplace smoking interventions have been reported so there is little information on which strategies are most likely to be effective in particular workplace settings. This paper discusses the main stages involved in the development and implementation of workplace smoking interventions (including the factors that should influence the intervention selected) and reports the pooled results of eight experimental studies of two types of smoking intervention. Six studies examined the efficacy of interventions based on the use of videotapes and two a treatment based on nicotine chewing gum (Nicorette). There was evidence for the effectiveness of the gum treatment but not the videotapes. Nicotine gum appears to be a promising treatment for smoking in workplace settings. The implications of our results for the design of workplace smoking interventions are discussed.