Mayo Clinic Builds Partnership for Smoke-Free Workplaces

(WomensHealth.gov)

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota launched today a new program to encourage employers to make their workplaces smoke free. The Global Smoke-Free Worksite Challenge was announced at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.

The Global Smoke-Free Worksite Challenge is a collaboration among the American Cancer Society, the Global Business Coalition on Health, Johnson & Johnson, Mayo Clinic, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

The goal of the challenge is to expand the number of employees of all economic sectors able to work in a smoke-free environment. The effort involves a global partnership of private sector companies, nongovernmental organizations and governments committed to making their workplaces 100 percent smoke-free and help others to do so.

The challenge builds on the campaign announced last year at CGI called Global Bridges. That program has begun to build a network of health care providers to lead development of tobacco control and treatment programs in their countries and regions. Mayo Clinic says that in less than a year, Global Bridges has trained more than 5,800 health care providers from 31 countries in sessions ranging from Webinars to in-person workshops.

Read more: Panel: Make Cigarettes Non-Addictive

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