A quit smoking program online: NSW SmokeCheck
SmokeCheck trains health workers to help Aboriginal clients quit smoking. When the program moved to the NSW Ministry of Health, we moved its website onto the shared Plone platform and kept the workshops, the training module and the resource ordering running.
The program
SmokeCheck teaches health workers a short conversation they can have with Aboriginal clients about quitting smoking. The program started in 2005 and launched in 2007, run by the Sydney School of Public Health at the University of Sydney. It has moved to the Centre for Population Health at the NSW Ministry of Health, and its website moved with it.
What the site does
The site is not a brochure. It carries the training workshop schedule and the registrations for it, an online training module, a catalogue of printed resources health workers can order, and the material from the Health Services Integration Project on getting the intervention into everyday practice.
The training module is the largest part. It follows the five steps taught in the workshop, ask, assess, advise, assist and arrange follow up, with three worked case studies, guidance on the stages of change, and a second section on the wider context: smoking rates in Aboriginal communities, what works in tobacco control, the health effects of smoking, and quitting. Health workers use it after a workshop, or come back to it later as a refresher.
Around that sits the ordinary work of a public site: news, the program newsletter, photo galleries from the workshops, partner links, a calculator showing what someone saves when they stop buying cigarettes, and a running count of the people the program has trained.
The move
The site it replaced was hand built, and changing it meant a developer. We moved it onto the shared Plone platform several NSW agencies already use, so the program team can edit their own pages, and the cost of hosting, support and maintenance is split with the other agencies instead of carried alone.
Built for who it is for
Some of what the site needs is not technical. The home page opens with an acknowledgement of the traditional owners of the lands the program has worked on. A notice warns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander visitors that the site may contain images or names of people who have died. The artwork through the site is by the NSW Aboriginal artist Bronwyn Bancroft, who designed the printed SmokeCheck resources, so the website and the booklet a health worker hands a client look like the same thing.
The site is built to WCAG 2.0 level AA, as the NSW government web standard requires.
What this involved
The website of a NSW Health program that trains health workers to talk with Aboriginal clients about quitting smoking
Moved from a hand-built site onto the shared Plone platform other NSW agencies already use
Workshop schedule and registration, kept current by the program team rather than by us
An online training module following the five steps of the intervention, with case studies, stages of change, and a second section on context and quitting
A catalogue of printed resources health workers can order after training
News, newsletters, workshop photo galleries, a quit savings calculator and a count of people trained
Acknowledgement of country, a notice about images of people who have died, and the SmokeCheck artwork carried through the design
WCAG 2.0 level AA, to the NSW government web standard
Hosting, support and maintenance shared with the other agencies on the platform