Initial reflection the Kentucky Center for Smoke-free Policy

 The Kentucky Center for Smoke-free Policy works to encourage communities to become smoke-free by making data on the dangers of smoking easily accessible and helping to educate the public through a conference and direct public outreach. Being “smoke-free” means that a city or county has passed laws prohibiting smoking inside or near public buildings and workplaces. This is still an important campaign. Even though the University of Kentucky has been smoke-free for seven years, Lexington itself has only begun the transition to being smoke-free earlier this year. Still other communities have yet to begin the transition at all. On the 15th of September, I met with Ms. Monica Mundy to discuss what my volunteering will look like this semester. She mentioned that once the Center moves to its new, larger location, most of my service will be designing social media campaigns to encourage smoke-free policy. I visited the website for Kentucky Center for Smoke-free Policy and their twitter page to better learn what that should look like. 

homepage of Kentucky Center for Smoke-free Policy

The website was not visually appealing, the information is squeezed in the center of the page and the graphics are much too small, but it is very easy to navigate. I could easily find their mission statement and the fact sheets with seemingly endless evidence that describes in no uncertain terms how bad smoking is for an individual's health and the health of a community. But in the nicely bulleted lists the information is cold and impersonal; the twitter page was what held the shock value. 

graphic depiction of a smoker next to a nonsmoker

smoking while pregnant is dangerous to both you and your child

On the twitter page graphic images and sharp, snappy catchphrases take the information from the fact sheets and help to distribute it to the larger world. Like any successful social media campaign, the messages are short and poignant. An organization has mere seconds to catch the attention of the scrolling audience. They do that through simple, bold type that's easy to read quickly and shocking images. The top image, for example, caused me to stop and try to decided what exactly the guy smoking is made of and how to I keep myself from looking the same way. 

Social media campaigns against smoking are all about depicting smoking as negatively as possible as quickly as possible. And not just for the person who is choosing to smoke, for everyone who is unfortunate enough to be around them. I am excited to work with Kentucky Center for Smoke-free Policy to help design this year's campaign. I believe smoking is a selfish choice because of the lasting harm it does to those around the smoker. Therefore I am excited to help encourage people to quit- for the sake of their children, their significant others, or even for the sake of their pets. I am also excited because this campaign gives me an opportunity to help translate science to the human experience. I am challenged to take data from studies and express it in ways that everyone can understand. I think this is an important step for public education of the dangers of smoking; not everyone understands what a researcher means when he or she expresses values to a 0.05 confidence interval, but everyone can understand that smoking is the number one cause of preventable death in Kentucky. I cannot wait to begin working with Kentucky Center for Smoke-free Policy!