Boston hospitals to launch tobacco-free campaign

By Kay Lazar

November 17, 2011

1 minute to read

Ten Boston hospitals are launching an initiative to decrease tobacco use and exposure to cigarette smoke on their campuses, according to a news release from Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino.

The campaign, to be detailed at a news conference today at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, coincides with the 36th Great American Smokeout, an annual nationwide event that encourages people to quit on that day.

Leaders from the Brigham, Boston Medical Center, and Tufts Medical Center are expected to outline the steps their institutions will be taking to prohibit smoking on their campuses and to encourage workers to kick the habit. The hospitals already ban smoking indoors.

“We will be prohibiting smoking on all of our campus, including our outside space,’’ Brigham spokeswoman Lori Shanks said in an e-mail.

The hospital ban will extend to all of the Brigham’s satellite sites. The campaign will also include a comprehensive program to help Brigham employees quit smoking, Shanks said.

Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Hospital Association unveiled a similar initiative, which involved a ban on tobacco products on all hospital property, including parking areas, for any hospitals that chose to go smoke-free.

“Hospitals are stewards of the public health and smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in our country,’’ hospital association president and chief executive Lynn Nicholas said in a statement at that time.

The association’s campaign, created with the state’s Department of Public Health, provides an online information resource for hospitals to build their own tobacco-free programs.

Massachusetts spends $3.54 billion a year in annual health care costs linked to tobacco use, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.