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About Us
Fresh is England's first dedicated regional office for tobacco control, set up in 2005 to tackle the high toll of death and disease caused by smoking. In 2009 Fresh was awarded the Chief Medical Officer's inaugural Gold Medal for Public Health for contributions to the health of the North East.
Fresh provides a comprehensive regional programme for tobacco control, delivering regional campaigns and projects, providing effective leadership and expertise, developing a regional approach to reduce smoking and supporting the work of key partners including the NHS, local authorities and ley regional partners.
Based on the strongest international evidence base, it has led the way in delivering a multi-component package to change the social norms around smoking to make it less desirable, less acceptable and less accessible. The approach focuses on changing community norms rather than just changing individual behaviour.
As new people, businesses and organisations move into the community, they inherit, adopt and conform to the established norms around smoking and tobacco use. While a social norm change approach is emphasised, Fresh also supports the role of NHS Stop Smoking Services who offer direct support to smokers and their families in our communities.
The work of Fresh concentrates on three main areas - to motivate and support smokers to stop, to turn off the tap of new smokers, and to protect individuals and communities from tobacco related harm.
Since 2005 Fresh has delivered a comprehensive programme covering eight key components:
1/ Building infrastructure, skills and capacity and influencing decision making around tobacco - bringing together partners from health, local authorities, the voluntary sector and businesses.
2/ Protecting people - especially children - from secondhand smoke.
3/ Motivating and supporting smokers to stop - helping drive down smoking and supporting NHS Stop Smoking Services.
4/ Media, communications and education around smoking - viewed by the World Health Organisation as the cornerstone of any successful tobacco control programme.
5/ Reducing the availability and supply of tobacco products -both legal and illegal - and addressing the supply of tobacco to children.
6/ Tobacco regulation, eg through our current campaign to support plain, standardised tobacco packaging
7/ Reducing tobacco industry promotion aimed at recruiting new smokers,
8/ Research, monitoring and evaluation to ensure the programme is effective.
Click here to see endorsements from doctors, local authorities and NHS organisations of Fresh and the work carried out to tackle smoking in the North East.