TCRH to Become ‘Tobacco-Free’

Twin County Regional Healthcare (TCRH) has set plans in motion to join neighboring hospitals and health systems and hundreds of other hospitals and health systems in Virginia and North Carolina to become a tobacco-free campus on January 1, 2010.

“Our mission is to promote, preserve and restore the health of our community.  As a healthcare organization, we are committed to the health and safety of our employees, patients and visitors. We believe that we have a responsibility to take a leadership role on this major health issue.  The tobacco-free initiative is a concrete way we can demonstrate our ongoing commitment to healthy living”, said Jon Applebaum, TCRH President & CEO.

Smoking has not been permitted inside the facility or inside the clinics for a number of years.  This new initiative will expand campus wide and also include smoke free tobacco products.

“Informing the public is a very important part of our initiative.  We want to make sure our employees, patients and visitors are aware of our plans to become tobacco-free.  We feel strongly of the importance of this initiative and to the improvement of the health of our community.  We will have in place ‘alternatives’ to help employees and patients to remain tobacco-free on campus,” stated Cathy Blevins, Registered Respiratory Therapist and TCRH Tobacco-Free Committee Chairperson.

Cessation programs are being planned for employees and the community.    Patients who use tobacco products will be provided Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) upon admission if approved by their attending physician.

“We are asking our community members to become our partners in health to make this tobacco-free initiative successful”, encouraged Applebaum.

For more information about this initiative to become tobacco-free, please visit www.cancer.org or www.tcrh.org.

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