Dear all,
Please see the latest MECC bulletin May 2026.
Category: Smoking Cessation
Supporting clients who want to stop vaping
National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT); 2025.
NCSCT stopping vaping v9
This guidance is directed to stop smoking practitioners to guide clients who ask about stopping vaping. The NCSCT guidance provides practical advice for stop‑smoking practitioners on how to support people who want to stop vaping, while ensuring they do not relapse to smoking. It recognises that many people use vaping as an effective stop‑smoking aid, but some eventually want to quit vaping — either gradually or immediately.
Key Points:
Clients can choose to stop vaping gradually (reducing nicotine strength, reducing frequency) or in one step, depending on personal preference and relapse risk.
Vaping is an effective quitting tool, and NICE recommends using vapes for as long as they help prevent relapse to smoking. The main priority when assisting someone to quit vaping is avoiding a return to cigarette use. [ncsct.co.uk]
Support should be tailored to the person’s stage of quitting and their risk of relapse. This includes understanding their reasons for wanting to stop vaping.
Stopping vaping does not require a full behavioural support programme. Instead, practitioners should offer information, reassurance, and guidance. [ncsct.co.uk]
The guidance suggests using the familiar Ask, Advise, Act model to structure conversations with clients.
Making Every Contact Count
The most recent Make Every Contact count public heath bulletin looking at latest evidence around smoking cessation, alcohol, healthy weight, healthy eating and physical exercise is now available. The bulletin is produced by Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS FT Library staff. If you cannot access any of the articles included in the bulletin please contact academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk.
Smoking Cessation
Alcohol
Healthy Weight
Healthy Eating
Physical Activity
Healthcare partnership trials quit smoking app to support mental health
A new pilot programme in the North East and Yorkshire is offering patients at acute and mental health trusts access to a digital app designed to help people quit smoking.
Participants receive free access to the Smoke Free app, which provides tools, guidance and personalised encouragement to support people on their stop smoking journey. The pilot is being delivered through a collaboration involving Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria, Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber, and NHS England for the region.
Smoking rates remain higher among people living with mental health conditions, and digital support tools like this may offer an accessible way to improve long term health and wellbeing.
Read more: Healthcare partnership trials use of quit smoking app | UKAuthority
Making Every Contact Count
The most recent Make Every Contact count public heath bulletin looking at latest evidence around smoking cessation, alcohol, healthy weight, healthy eating and physical exercise is now available. The bulletin is produced by Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS FT Library staff. If you cannot access any of the articles included in the bulletin please contact academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk.
Smoking Cessation
Alcohol
Healthy Weight
Healthy Eating
Physical Activity
Making Every Contact Count May 2025
The most recent Make Every Contact count public heath bulletin looking at latest evidence around smoking cessation, alcohol, healthy weight, healthy eating and physical exercise is now available. The bulletin is produced by Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS FT Library staff. If you cannot access any of the articles included in the bulletin please contact academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk.
Smoking Cessation
Alcohol
Healthy Weight & Healthy Eating
Physical Activity
A Roadmap to a Smokefree Country: New Report Calls for Bold Action
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health has released its 2025 report, A Roadmap to a Smokefree Country, outlining urgent steps to end smoking in the UK within a generation. Central to the plan is a proposed ‘polluter pays’ levy on tobacco companies, aiming to raise £700 million annually to fund cessation programs and reduce health inequalities. The report also recommends stricter regulations on youth vaping and a cap on tobacco industry profits. With smoking remaining a leading cause of preventable illness and death, the report urges all political parties to commit to a fully funded, long-term strategy to make smoking obsolete.
Read the full report: A Roadmap to a Smokefree Country – APPG on Smoking and Health
Making Every Contact Count January 2025
The most recent Make Every Contact count public heath bulletin looking at latest evidence around smoking cessation, alcohol, healthy weight, healthy eating and physical exercise is now available. The bulletin is produced by Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS FT Library staff. If you cannot access any of the articles included in the bulletin please contact academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk.
Smoking Cessation
Alcohol
Healthy Weight
Healthy Eating
Physical Activity
Making Every Contact Count September 2024
The most recent Make Every Contact count public heath bulletin looking at latest evidence around smoking cessation, alcohol, healthy weight, healthy eating and physical exercise is now available. The bulletin is produced by Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS FT Library staff. If you cannot access any of the articles included in the bulletin please contact academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk.
Smoking Cessation
Alcohol
Healthy Weight
Healthy Eating
Physical Activity
Public Health
Current Awareness
Are UK health systems dementia ready?: Comparing dementia policy across the four nations of the UK.
Future Health; 2024.
(A dementia diagnosis remains one of the most feared by the public. The potential arrival of new treatments creates an opportunity to improve patient outcomes. But to do so will require health systems to be dementia ready quickly. Urgent action is now needed to make them so.)
Freely available online
When I’m 64: A strategy to tackle poverty before state pension age: summary report.
Fabian Society; 2024.
(The UK is facing a hidden poverty crisis among 60 to 65-year-olds. Since 2010, no significant measures to ameliorate the impact of the rising pension age have been introduced. This report looks at the roots of the problem and presents a strategy for solving it.)
Freely available online
The future for health after Brexit.
Nuffield Trust; 2024.
(This report tracks issues that are important for the delivery of health and care in the UK to understand how our changing relationship with Europe is changing the picture for the NHS and health more generally, and what the prospects are for the future. This latest report shows that global medicine shortages are being felt particularly acutely in the UK, and the country’s reliance on migration as a source of health and social care staff is intensifying.)
Freely available online
Internet Watch Foundation Annual Report 2023: #BehindTheScreens.
Internet Watch Foundation (IWF); 2024.
(IWF works to end child sexual abuse imagery online. The annual report contains 2023 trends and data, and case studies and provides some analysis on the distribution of child sexual abuse images and videos on the internet. The new data reveals thousands of images and videos of three to six year old children who have been groomed, coerced and tricked into sexually abusive acts, are now being found on the open internet.)
On the path to ending smoking: using new funding.
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH); 2024.
(With a major opportunity to reset our local strategies and make rapid progress towards ending smoking for all populations this paper has been developed by ASH in partnership with DsPH and Humber and North Yorkshire’s Centre for Tobacco Control Excellence to support local decision making in spending new funding to address smoking. It has been reviewed and endorsed by the Association of Directors of Public Health.)
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