Executives of Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center will implement a new policy that will prohibit the hiring of nicotine users beginning July 1.

Patty Peterson, director of public relations at Sarah Bush, said the policy comes from a need to continue to promote healthy habits and set a good example for the community.

“Part of our mission is to create healthy communities, and that means to help people get well and stay well,” she said. “We felt like we couldn’t really do that if we continued to allow unhealthy activities to go on around us.”

Several months ago, the administrative team talked about putting such a policy in place.

Peterson said other area health facilities have similar policies, including Methodist Medical Center in Peoria and the Cleveland Clinic.

“There are hospitals and medical centers across the nation that have been doing this for several years,” Peterson said. “We just wanted to be a model of health, and we felt like we couldn’t support nicotine use in any way if we wanted to be that model.”

The policy will only affect employees hired after July 1, but current employees who are nicotine users are and have been encouraged to kick the habit.

“We support current employees and their family members who want to stop using nicotine and have encouraged them to do so for many years,” Peterson said.

She said there are plenty of financial incentives to quit smoking.

Sarah Bush has a wellness program that offers discounts on health insurance for non-users, free smoking cessation classes for employees and family members, counseling and other efforts that have led up to the formation of this policy.

“We’ve had very high success rates with our programs,” Peterson said.

No additional preventative programming will be formed with the addition of the new policy, and Peterson said Sarah Bush will continue to provide the current preventative efforts.

“We sent a representative, one of our nurses, to Mayo Clinic to learn from the best about smoking cessation,” she said.

Peterson said overall, reactions to the new policy have been good.

“For the most part, it’s been pretty positive,” she said. “We have had a few negative comments surrounding it, but I believe the majority of our employees support (the new policy).”

Peterson said she believes the majority of Sarah Bush employees are non-nicotine users, but for the most part, feedback has been positive.

“I think overall, this new policy will be positively received by the community,” she said.

Robyn Dexter can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].