South West Clinical Senate. Tobacco Prevention in the South West (Sept 2017)

Deliberation about he most effective methods for delivering smoking/tobacco prevention in the South West and how could the health community be used to support this? Defining a smoke free NHS.

In May 2017 the Clinical Senate Council session considered smoking and obesity as criteria for fitness for
surgery. The outcome of this session was not to support smoking or obesity as criteria for delaying or
denying surgery but to recognise that referral for surgery represents a “teachable moment” to support
changes in behaviours which impact on health. With this context, and following the publication in July 2017
of the Tobacco Control Plan for England Public Health England (PHE) brought the topic of tobacco prevention
to the clinical senate to consider how to incentivise the health community to recognise smoking as tobacco
dependency and that supporting people to quit is one of the highest value healthcare interventions the NHS
offers.