Evidence for a young adult-targeted tobacco control campaign stimulating cessation-related responses among adult smokers and recent quitters.

Aims: Young adults are an important group for tobacco control interventions because of their high smoking prevalence. In 2014, New Zealand launched a young adult-targeted tobacco control campaign: 'Stop Before You Start'. The evaluation undertaken with young adults (aged 18 to 24 years) showed that the campaign exerted positive impacts on this age group. This study aimed to investigate the collateral effects of this campaign on older adults.

Methods: Data were collected from a fortnightly survey of adult smokers and recent quitters, where respondents were maintained on a panel and interviewed every fortnight, up to six times. This paper reports on data collected over three consecutive fortnights (540 interviews). Ten measures were used to assess campaign effectiveness (eg, felt regret, tried to quit).

Results: After adjusting for recent quit attempt status and socio-demographic characteristics, age differences were not found in any of the outcome variables (aged 25-44 years and 45+ years were compared against 18-24 years).

Conclusions: Internationally, little is known about the effectiveness of young adult-targeted tobacco control campaigns. Alongside data from the campaign evaluation with young adults, findings from the current study suggest that this young adult-targeted campaign also created a desirable impact on older adults.