No Smokes: an anti-tobacco campaign for Indigenous kids
Project Manager:        Dr Sheree Cairney
Project start/finish:        2010 – 2012
For more information:    sheree.cairney@menzies.edu.au

The Department of Health and Ageing has funded Menzies School of Health Research to produce a national anti-tobacco initiative targeted at young Indigenous people. No Smokes is first and foremost an interactive website, with video clips and animations, games and health information to provide support to smokers to get quit and stay quit.

The website features a simple animation that explains how nicotine addiction affects the brain, and how the brain can beat addiction. Aboriginal celebrities and sporting stars, health experts, elders and successful quitters extol the benefits of giving up. From a hilarious skit by comedian Sean Choolburra hamming it up in a version of Beyonce’s ‘All the Single Ladies’ where he substitutes ‘All the Cigarettes’ and concludes that ‘if you love it put a patch on it’, to a hip hop dance off between a smoker and a non-smoker where users may superimpose their own head on that of one of the dancers, No Smokes is novel, fun and youth friendly.

No Smokes is also a great resource for teachers and health workers, providing educational material, downloadable tools and fun interactive activities.

For more videos visit the No Smokes Youtube Channel

Menzies is evaluating the reach and uptake of the No Smoke project’s key messages and our online surveys are powered by SurveyGizmo survey software http://www.surveygizmo.com/