Ruby Cheung 

Public Health Support Officer - Tobacco Control, Harrow Council

Improvement Project: To evaluate the use of financial incentives in promoting smoking cessation with mental health patients.

Introducing the first project in London to offer financial incentives for patients with mental health issues to quit smoking. This innovative program, previously piloted in maternity units with outstanding success, showed that pregnant women were 24 times more likely to quit smoking. By extending this approach, we aim to significantly reduce missed appointments and enhance the success rates of smoking cessation through strategic, opportunistic interventions in the mental health population. 

Through the Improvement Leader Fellowship programme, I would like to collaborate with fellows from other specialities in order to address social determinants of health. This offers a great chance to develop a strong relationship between service users and providers so that services delivered could be more people-centred and meet the real needs of the population.