Problem/Objective: To examine community readiness for local smoke-free policy development. The community readiness model identifies a problem within a community and assists in the implementation of strategies to address the problem. This model has been used to appraise communities' readiness for prevention programs such as HIV/AIDS, but not for public policy readiness.

Methods: A descriptive, cross sectional design was used to assess the six dimensions of the community readiness: 1) knowledge of the problem, 2) existing policy efforts, 3) tobacco control leadership, 4) resources for supporting tobacco control, 5) community climate for tobacco control, and 6) political climate. Dimension scores were summed to identify one of six overall readiness stages for each community. Correlations between dimensions and overall readiness scores were evaluated. Regional differences among dimension and readiness scores were examined using one-way ANOVA. The influence of sociodemographic variables on policy development was analyzed by multiple regression.

Results: Data were collected for 64 communities. Of the six dimensions, knowledge was the highest rated with community climate the lowest. The leadership dimension correlated strongest with overall readiness (r = .79; p = .001) whereas existing voluntary policies had the weakest relationship (r = .51; p = .001). There was no relationship between overall readiness and political caucus region (F [4, 59] = 1.17; p > .05). Smaller communities were less ready for policy development than larger ones (adjusted r2 = .25; p = .003).

Conclusions: This study determined the community readiness model is appropriate to use for public policy analysis.