“Good Health…It’s in the Air!” is the theme of Bridgeport Hospital’s smoke-free campus initiative. Effective Friday, March 20, the first day of spring, the hospital will prohibit smoking in all outdoor areas of its Grant Street-Mill Hill Avenue campus. Smoking has been banned inside hospital buildings since the 1980s.

“Extending the current indoor smoking ban to outdoor areas is the right thing to do for the health and safety of our patients, visitors and staff, thus our ‘Good Health…It’s in the Air!’ theme,” explains Administrative Director of Support Operations Marc Brunetti, head of the hospital’s Smoke-free Campus Committee.

Until now, smoking has been allowed in a few designated outdoor areas of the Bridgeport Hospital campus. The committee has been working since last fall to educate staff members and the public about the more extensive smoking ban, and to offer smoking-cessation support and resources, including the hospital’s own Quit Smart program. The next four-part series of Quit Smart classes begins on April 21. For information, call 1-888-357-2396.

Signs at hospital entryways and lobbies announce the implementation of the wider smoking ban, and the Smoke-free Committee will continue to staff an information table in the main lobby each Monday through March 16.

Brunetti says the wider smoking ban will include all sidewalks, courtyards and parking garages on hospital property. “This will mean that smoking will be prohibited inside any vehicle parked on our grounds, as well,” he says. “People will not be able to run out to their car for a cigarette break if it’s in one of the parking areas on our campus.”

Brunetti says that hospital security officers will step up patrols to enforce the outdoor smoking ban.

Bridgeport Hospital joins a number of other Connecticut hospitals that have, or soon will, implement an outdoor smoking ban. The Connecticut Hospital Association is spearheading a statewide initiative to make all hospital campuses in the state totally smoke-free by November 2010.