Not a national programme adapted for local use — a small, focused charity that grew from a conversation at a community health event in Dumfries.
Vibrant Health Advocates – Theta is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation based in Dumfries, working across Dumfries & Galloway to make quitting smoking and vaping a shared, supported endeavour rather than a private battle. We are a small, focused charity — not a national programme adapted for local use, but an organisation built here, for here, from the ground up.
Our model centres on peer support groups: regular gatherings where people at every stage of their quit journey can speak honestly, ask questions without embarrassment, and draw strength from others who are in the same position. These groups are facilitated by trained peer supporters — people who have quit themselves and understand the landscape of cravings, slip-ups, and gradual victories intimately. We complement that human element with plain, honest health information that helps participants understand what is happening in their bodies and why certain strategies work.
We operate across Dumfries town and extend outreach into the surrounding rural communities of Dumfries & Galloway, one of Scotland's most geographically spread-out regions. We know that people in Glencaple, Moniaive, Kirkbean, and dozens of other villages face specific barriers — fewer NHS services nearby, stronger social norms around smoking in some communities, and the practical difficulty of accessing support. Our work actively addresses those barriers rather than ignoring them.
Peer support means someone who really gets it
Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation
registered with OSCR
Vibrant Health Advocates – Theta grew from a conversation at a community health event in Dumfries. A small group of local people — some with lived experience of smoking cessation, some working in community health roles — noticed a persistent gap: the people who most needed smoking cessation support were the least likely to engage with formal clinical services. They felt judged, or found appointment-based support impractical, or had simply been through the NHS stop-smoking pathway and found it helpful but insufficient for the long haul.
What they needed wasn't a prescription or a leaflet — they needed other people. The founding group began running informal peer sessions in 2017, formalised as a SCIO shortly after, and spent the following years developing a model grounded in what participants themselves said worked: honesty, consistency, and being treated as capable adults.
Over the years we've refined every element of what we do — how sessions are structured, how peer facilitators are trained and supported, how we communicate with people who are still ambivalent about quitting, and how we stay connected with participants after they've left a group. The vaping surge of the early 2020s brought a new population to our doors: younger people and long-term former smokers who had switched to vapes and now found themselves equally dependent and equally unsupported. We adapted, bringing the same peer model to bear on vaping cessation and building specific resources around the distinct experience of vape dependency. Today, Vibrant Health Advocates – Theta is a trusted part of the health landscape in Dumfries & Galloway — small, specialist, and deeply effective.
Informal peer sessions since 2017
Vibrant Health Advocates – Theta exists to make stopping smoking and vaping genuinely achievable for everyone in Dumfries and the surrounding rural communities of Dumfries & Galloway, by delivering peer-led cessation groups that combine honest, plain-language health information with the lived experience and encouragement of others on the same journey. We believe that quitting is not a test of character or willpower, but a process that is transformed by knowledge, human connection, and the simple reassurance that you are not doing it alone. We are committed to reaching the people least well served by existing health services — including those in rural and isolated communities — and to maintaining the warmth, credibility, and participant-centred culture that has made our approach work where others have not.
Vibrant Health Advocates – Theta is governed by a board of trustees who bring a combination of local knowledge, health expertise, and community commitment to the charity's oversight. Our trustees are actively engaged with the work — they attend sessions, know our participants and peer facilitators by name, and ensure that the organisation stays true to the values it was founded on. Alongside the trustee board, our peer facilitators and small operational team are the daily heartbeat of what we do.
Our peer facilitators are the heart of what we do. They are people who have quit smoking or vaping themselves, have trained with us, and now give their time and experience to help others. Their credibility — the fact that they have genuinely been through it — is what makes the sessions work. We invest significantly in their training and ongoing support, because their wellbeing and confidence directly shapes the experience of every person who walks into one of our groups.
No referral needed. No commitment beyond turning up. Come and see how a group might work for you.
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