News and Events
The Tobacco Free Partnership of Dixie County Look to Build on its Recent Successes
August 1, 2019
The 2019-2020 Tobacco Free Partnership of Dixie County year began with a meeting at the Dixie County Public Library. This year the partnership will continue to work on some new tobacco prevention policies and they will also continue to build on the work that they have been successful in the past years.
The mission of the Dixie County Tobacco-Free Partnership is to mobilize community partners to establish long-lasting system and policy changes that promote tobacco-free social norms in order to prevent usage of tobacco products by youth/young adults, encourage and support tobacco cessation, eliminate health hazards of secondhand and third-hand smoke, with the ultimate goal of thereby decreasing the number of deaths due to tobacco products in Dixie County. The Tobacco Free Partnership of Dixie County has held quarterly meeting since 2009. For the 2019-2020 the partnership has one quarterly meeting planned for each quarter at the Dixie County Public Library. August 21, October 30, February 19, and April 29, 2020. A second subcommittee partnership meeting will be scheduled with the Dixie County High School in order to reach the high school youth as partners. |
 |
The motivation of the partnership members is based on the tobacco use rates in Dixie County. According to the 2018 Florida Tobacco Youth Survey reported 47% of Dixie Youth have tried a tobacco product, 10.8% are current smokeless tobacco users, 13% are current ENDS users, and 9.2% are current cigarette users. The 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) reported that 36.9% of Dixie County residents were current smokers and 29.2% were daily smokers.
The partnership works to address their mission of goals by developing and/or sustain core infrastructures of tobacco prevention and control activities, and promote usage of the Florida Quit Your Way Program, in a culturally competent manner to deliver services that include diverse service providers represented in all goal areas. These service providers, which include Dixie County health department, schools public and private, businesses and business organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce, health care systems and providers, law enforcement, local and statewide non-profit agencies such as the Dixie Rotary, the Dixie Anti-Drug Coalition, and others are recommended by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2014 Best Practices for Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs (CDC Best Practices)
GOALS OF THE 2019 – 2020 Dixie County TOBACCO-FREE PARTNERSHIP include:
- Reduce Smokeless Tobacco Use in Rural Communities (Rural): "Tobacco Free Events", Publicly and/or privately managed events which are designated, regardless of the venue, as being tobacco free (ex: county fairs, community festivals, rodeos, recreational/sports competitions). The partnership will also participate in an assessment of the city, county and private parks for current tobacco policies and signage. Park clean-ups will an activity that the partnership will participate in to build support towards stronger policies and monitoring compliances.
- Counteract Tobacco Product Marketing at the Retail Point of Sale (POS). The partnerships goal is to establish a process to obtain and/or maintain a Tobacco Retail License in Dixie County. The partners will begin mobilizing their communities toward adopting local tobacco retail licenses. TRL is a policy tool similar to those used to regulate alcohol, pharmacists, and restaurants by state and local governments. As a method to protect public health and safety, local governments are given the opportunity to license tobacco retailers. This would require all businesses that sell tobacco products to obtain and/or maintain a license from the city or county government for the privilege of selling such products to consumers. Failure to obtain, maintain, and/or adhere to requirements of the TRL can include citations, fines, and imprisonment.
- Policy to Create Tobacco Free Worksites. The partnership will be working with several worksites on the need to create a tobacco free worksite and will work on Informing and educating on benefits of policy change at the local level (School Board or School Administration) on the 12 gold standards of a Tobacco Free School District Policy.
Mrs. Lola Butler will continue to serve as the partnership chair. Mrs. Butler will attended quarterly partnership meeting, facilitated each meeting agenda, promoted the partnership policy work and supported many of the SWAT activities. The Co-Chair, Mrs. Angie Land will also continue in her position as co-chair as she has served the past four years. The partnership has a very large, active youth membership. The youth provide so much information on the increase use of new tobacco products and Electronic Nicotine Delivery Devices (Vaping). All of the local decision makers appreciate the input on tobacco policies from the youth.
In 2019-20, the Tobacco Free Partnership will sponsor several community events to promote tobacco free policies. These events may include: the Cross City Tree Lighting by the Town of Cross City, the Father/Daughter Dance by the Dixie Rotary, the Dixie Little League Season, and the Cross City Fly-In and Business Expo by the Dixie Chamber of Commerce. Each event adopted tobacco free venue policies and promoted the policies throughout the events.
For information on the Tobacco Free Partnership of Dixie County contact Melanie Anderson, the Dixie County Tobacco Prevention Specialist at manderson@quitdoc.com or 352-256-1061.
RSVP at info@tfp-dixie.org 