Community Smokefree and Pharmacy Smokefree Services have been working together across Glasgow City to run specialist stop smoking clinics within priority neighbourhood areas for health improvement, which have traditionally high footfall for smoking cessation services but low quit rates.

The new approach supported by specialist advisors from Smokefree Community Services, began in February 2017 with impressive outcomes, including one localised example of a 56 percent increase in smokers setting a quit date from January–June 2017 compared to the same period in 2016.

Clients can attend either the specialist clinic to receive intensive stop smoking support, or quit through pharmacy services for less intensive support. Specialist stop smoking services can now be found working out of pharmacy settings across the city on a regular basis.

Such collaboration is fostering more consistent communication and productive working relationships between the services. As a result, there have been many positive outcomes such as more patients with challenging life circumstances that impact on their ability to stop smoking being referred into intensive support from the pharmacy service.

Heather Bath, Health Improvement Senior, South Locality, said: “The two services bring different strengths to this work, with community pharmacies engaging with high numbers of smokers, and Smokefree Community Services engaging with less smokers, but able to provide a more intensive service to those who find it most difficult to quit. Better outcomes (higher quit rates) are seen with the more intensive service.”