Background: Exposure to smoking (pre and postnatal) continues as the main contributor to preventable death and disease of babies and young children in New Zealand. Low awareness of a child's vulnerability is reducing the uptake of established safety advice and leading to one infant death a week and high rates of admission to hospital for respiratory illnesses. Driving Home, a community education initiative using taxis as infant health promoters, aims to lift awareness across New Zealand and achieve improved infant health and survival. This presentation reports the origins, design, trial, implementation and reach of this innovative education alliance between Education for Change and the New Zealand Taxi Federation.

Strategy: Driving Home uses taxi dashboards to display seven interchangeable colourful cards bearing key infant health messages, three of which promote smokefree. The back of each card has supporting information for interested passengers. Taxi drivers, as conversation experts, are encouraged to engage passengers in discussions about the messages. Following a successful trial in August 2006 involving 29 cars and over 3000 passengers, participation in the project was offered nationally and phase one launched on 1st December 2006. Currently eleven companies and 500 cabs are displaying cards with an estimated 2.7 million exposures anticipated in one year.

Conclusion: Promotion of smokefree children messages needs “outside the box” thinking and alliances if priority groups and secondary caregivers are to be included in education. The Driving Home Project aims to generate broad participation in discussion and encourage a ripple effect of increased awareness in communities.