Analysis of draft National Tobacco Strategy (NTS) 2022–2030 public consultation submissions

The first National Tobacco Strategy (NTS) was developed in 1999 as part of greater efforts at coordination of tobacco control measures across levels of government. There have been two subsequent national strategies covering the periods 2004–09 and 2012–18. The NTS is a sub-strategy of the National Drug Strategy and sets out to complement the National Preventative Health Strategy. Each iteration of the NTS is interconnected with a range of other strategies and plans addressing tobacco use and its effect on population health outcomes. In 2022 a draft of the NTS 2022–2030 was prepared by Australian governments and members of the public were invited to provide feedback on the draft. The Department of Health engaged HMA to review and analyse the public consultation submissions to the draft NTS 2022–2030. Key tasks included:

• detailed thematic analysis of detailed submissions using NVivo analysis software
• quantitative and qualitative analysis of online survey responses, and
• development and application of a compliance framework to ensure submissions were analysed in line with Article 5.3 of the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

The project commenced in April 2022 and was completed in November 2022.