Empower launch innovative toolkit supporting a smoke free Fingal!

Our toolkit ‘Tobacco Free Fingal: A toolkit for a Tobacco-Free Community’ was officially launched by Minister for State at the Department of Health, Catherine Byrne, at our Dublin 15 office on 6th March 2019. This is an initiative that aims to support the people of Fingal to become smoke free in their community facilities, homes, parks and beaches.

Statistics for Ireland, and especially the communities we work in are quite shocking. Ireland ranks second in Europe for smoking related deaths. The rates of smokers are no better – while nationally 22 per cent of the population are smokers, smoking rates in lower-income communities are 37 per cent.

This is what motivated Empower to develop this toolkit. Research shows that community agencies, like us, can play a vital role in supporting people to quit and de-normalising smoking, while feedback from our community groups across Fingal play a big role the effectiveness and sustainability of the project.

This toolkit has been developed in conjunction with the Irish Cancer Society, and the HSE’s Health Promotion and Improvement Unit to strengthen the tobacco-free programme further in Ireland’s communities

To access the Toolkit, contact:  ksmith@empower.ie.

To learn about our ‘We Can Quit’ peer support programmes for women in Fingal contact: sfox@empower.ie