The campuses of the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) and UMass Memorial Medical Center will be tobacco-free next May.

Beginning on Tuesday, May 27, the institutions will launch a six-month education and health effort that aims to eliminate the use of all tobacco products on school and medical center property, even including parking facilities.

Tobacco-Free Initiative asks for the institutions to provide a range of resources to encourage and support smokers in their attempts to end the habit.

UMass Medical School and UMass Memorial now find themselves as part of the growing number of health care institutions that are proactively engaging in the reduction of tobacco use. Officials from both institutions note the well-documented health risks associated with smoking and second-hand smoke. The initiative aims to support quitters with counseling and low-cost treatment services, including nicotine replacement therapy.

These options will be available to all employees, students, patients and visitors.

For the past year, UMMS and UMass Memorial have had a team of physicians and employees meeting to put together a viable tobacco-free policy, which culminated with the recent announcement of the new initiative.

“This is a milestone in the history of these two institutions and in the history of public health in Central Massachusetts,” said Dr. Terence R. Flotte, Dean of the School of Medicine and Executive Deputy Chancellor at UMMS. “We have a responsibility to create a healthy environment for our patients, employees, students and visitors, and we’re committed to doing just that.”

The announcement came on the 30th anniversary of the American Cancer Society’s annual Great American Smokeout. Critical to the success of the plan is the commitment of UMMS and UMass Memorial to have the resources necessary to make the new policy work.

“This is something other hospitals have done successfully,” said the director of the Tobacco-Free Initiative, Gregory Seward, at the announcement of the new program.

The unveiling of the tobacco-free program comes on the same week as the UMMS’s announcement marking the launch of their new Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology program at the Worcester campus. Professor of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology Zhiping Weng, formerly of Boston University, is joining the faculty to head the program.

UMass Medical won $300,000 in grants for further diabetes research in mid-November, and has seen significant increases in funding since the work of UMMS researcher Craig Mello was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine last year.