The EE-COE project in Hungary has increasingly turned the attention to healthcare professionals’ smoking cessation education. It has been realized that there is great need to increase the number of dedicated individuals who would promote smoking cessation and could reach diverse members of local communities. The Hungarian team’s newest focus is getting health visitors involved in cessation counselling, since they have perhaps the easiest access to the population, including children, youth, expecting mothers and through them, the entire family. The health visitors’ network is a unique institutional organisation of maternity and infant protection in Hungary which serves health maintenance and health promotion of families. Although health visitors are obliged by law to conduct brief intervention to expecting mothers, they usually lack the skills and the practice. A pilot training was designed to be held in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county. The population’s socio-economic status here is generally lower compared to most other areas in the country and both overall and expecting mothers’ smoking rate is high. For many, smoking is a learned behavior influence by the family.
The two-day intensive workshop was followed by a training period and a supervisory day when health visitors shared counselling experiences. The aim was to build on existing knowledge of health visitors and provide them with practical skills to aid communication, raise motivation, disseminate relaxation and relapse prevention techniques to smokers. Three trainings were held in September and were attended by 45 health visitors. Around 130 patients have been counselled already since the trainings.
The pilot was so well received that the Hungarian team has been contacted by the neighbouring county who are interested in bringing the program to their region. The above and data collected from the health visitors will be presented.