Russia Health Communications Campaign
Russia has 43 million tobacco users. 40% of Russian smoke – more than 60% of men and 21% of women, these figures represent the highest smoking rates in the world.
Russia became one of a few countries in the world producing graphic testimonials and airing them nationally when in September 2012 the Ministry of Health ran a series of ads to support new graphic pack warnings – an idea effectively executed in Australia. The ads feature prominent Russian doctors showing the horrendous effects cigarettes have on infants, as well as the heart and lungs, and calling on smokers to quit.
WLF provided campaign materials and technical assistance to the Moscow Duma Committee on Public Health, to governmental tobacco control agencies under the Regional Ministries of Health and civil society organizations in Chuvashia, Krasnoyarsk, Samara, Arkhangelsk, Krasnodar and Tver for tobacco control campaigns in 2008 and 2011. The campaign sequence in these key Russian regions addresses strategically messages on Harmful Effects of Smoking /Second Hand Smoking/Smoke Free.
Officials from these regions also attended a WLF mass media training and workshop in Moscow in September 2009 and in Istanbul in September 2010 to learn more about how to plan and implement effective tobacco control campaigns.