Browsing by Subject "nicotine replacement therapy"

Smoking poses a significant threat to public health. Major public health benefits could be attained if we could increase the incidence of smoking cessation on the national level. However, smoking cessation is often difficult, therefore different medical means have been devised to make it easier for people to quit. One of these medical means is nicotine replacement therapy(NRT). Since NRT entered the market it has been contested which kind of role counselling should have when people purchase NRT. NRT was deregulated In Finland in 2006. Prior to this thesis there has not been carried out studies that would have tried to investigate where the retailer shops are located after deregulation. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the deregulation affected to the distribution of NRT sales in different NRT-outlets and pharmacies in 2006-2015. It is also aim to investigate if the new outlets have tangibly increased the coverage of NRT-outlets network in diverse municipalities, e.g.in more sparsely populated rural municipalities. Finnish Medical Agency‘s (FIMEA) data about NRT-outlets between the years of 2006-2015 was used as source data for this thesis. This data was analysed by comparing the number of NRToutlets and pharmacies in diverse municipalities. The municipalities have been classified regarding the area and population of diverse municipalities, among other parameters. The PDF sheet of FIMEA’s NRT-outlet data was converted into an Excel file, and using that as a basis different diagrams were made. The number of NRT-outlets grew steadily until during the year 2011 there was a slightly bigger increase in the number of NRT-outlets as NRT became available in restaurants too. Afterwards the growth of NRT-outlets diminished. It can be seen from the results that NRT-outlets, more than pharmacies, are concentrated to the crowded municipalities. On the other hand, there has hardly been an increase in the coverage of NRT-outlet network in more sparsely populated rural municipalities since deregulation took place. However, many of the municipalities that have a pharmacy and one or a few other NRT-outlets are located in Southern Finland surrounding bigger city municipalities or in Central Finland.