| Summary: | Background and challenges to implementation
The Vietnam
Tobacco Control Law, effective since May 2013, requires all indoor public
places including restaurants and cafeterias be 100% smoke-free. However, GATS
2015 findings showed the highest prevalence and the most modest reduction of
second-hand smoke exposure in restaurants during 2010-2015 (80.7% and 84.9%
respectively) compared to other settings. The challenges were low political
commitment and reluctance of authorities to implement smoke-free policies in
restaurants, the resistance of business owners due to concerns about losing
profits and competitive edge, and high public acceptability of smoking.
Intervention or response
In 2015-2016, HealthBridge worked with the Hanoi city and districts´ Health Departments and other partners on “Strengthening implementation of smoke-free restaurants (SFR) in Hanoi”. The project's strategies were: i) Advocacy to add SFR implementation into the Hanoi city action plan; ii) Facilitate the role of local authorities at district level in managing, training, monitoring, and enforcing the implementation of SFR instead of focusing authorities at city level; iii) Peer education to engage managers of compliant SFR to share their experience to create the trust and motivation of restaurant owners; iv) Media campaigns to raise public awareness and support.
Results and lessons learnt
Managers of 600 restaurants were trained on SFR implementation.
400 of them signed a commitment to be smoke-free. Monitoring visits of
authorities at district level was established for the first time and deployed
regularly. This proved to be a sustainable enforcement mechanism because of its simple administrative procedure for
setting up when compare to interdisciplinary team of authorities at city level.
The rate of restaurants going smoke-free increased from 25% to 44% (pre-post
intervention survey). The knowledge and support from customers and restaurant
owners on SFR policy also increased significantly.
Conclusions and key recommendations
The
project's strategies have proven to be effective in improving the implementation
of smoke-free policy in restaurants. These strategies
should be scaled up to other areas.
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