Introduction

What is PATH?

• National training standards for stop-smoking work in Scotland have been developed, as have training courses which are in line with those standards. In partnership with Glasgow Caledonian University, academically-accredited training modules in stop-smoking support have been created, and are delivered across the country by ASH Scotland Regional Training Officers More information can be found in our Training and Development section (also accessible via the tab at the top of the page)
• Youth development work, which aims to develop and disseminate good practice for working with young people who smoke, and support activities in prevention and cessation work
• Inequalities-related work, which covers the range and breadth of all that PATH and ASH Scotland does and has specifically focussed on black and minority ethnic communities, older adults, and people with mental health needs.
• As part of our inequalities work, PATH published a report in July 2010 which looks at smoking prevalence rates within the LGBT community, identifies existing services to help those who wish to stop smoking or using tobacco, and gives recommendations for future action for PATH partners and LGBT community organisations/services
• Good Practice Guidance, issued in spring 2010, which distilled the learning from funded projects (see below) and provides a 'checklist' for use with similar initiatives (tobacco control or otherwise)
• Data Collection and Monitoring - Making recommendations on data collection and evaluation of stop-smoking services. This includes the development of a smoking cessation minimum dataset and smoking cessation database, which is now managed by the Information Services Division (ISD) of NHS Scotland
• PATH funded projects - A national Support Fund of £0.9m funded 11 creative local pilot initiatives around Scotland, exploring different approaches to tobacco work amongst identified priority groups.  There were three research-only and eight service-delivery projects, all of which ran between 2003 and 2007.