Tobacco Control Research

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Tobacco Control Research

• what is it good for?

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Lots of interesting and relevant research topics

• Tobacco cessation
• Tobacco use prevention
• Health effects of tobacco use
• Genetics and tobacco use
• Economics of tobacco
• Tobacco harm reduction
• Impact of government policies
• Politics of tobacco control

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The key question is for what purpose

• Is it to track the tobacco epidemic?
• Is it to reduce tobacco use in the population at
  large?
• Is it to make it easier for people who use
  tobacco to quit if they chose?
• Is it to advance scientific knowledge of some
  topic e.g., why some people find it easy and
  others find it hard to quit why some people get
  sick and others do not?
• Is it all of the above?
• Is it something else?

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The answer is it depends on your perspective

• What are potential funders doing
• NIH tends to support research on advancing new
  knowledge
• CDC and WHO tend to emphasize surveillance
• Some foundations (RWJF, Bloomberg) have focused
  on policy and/or program evaluation
• Business funders focus on selling more of their
  products (e.g., pharma, tobacco)

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WHO FCTC has focused our attention on reducing
future tobacco deaths
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Speed matters
Impact of policies depends on factors
including Intervention date Effect size
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What are the research questions that if answered
would do the most to speed up a reduction in
deaths from tobacco?

• What are countries doing now to reduce tobacco
  use?
• What interventions are working best to reduce
  tobacco use?
• Do these interventions work the same in all
  countries?
• What interventions have we not evaluated very
  well that should be (product bans, plain
  packaging, product substitution, trade policies)

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are the current research funding priorities of
existing funding agencies consistent with the
goal of speeding up a decline in tobacco deaths?
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Most Countries Have Not Implemented Effective
Tobacco Control Policies
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Global Tobacco Control is Underfunded
Globally, tobacco tax revenues are 500 times
higher than spending on tobacco control In low-
and middle-income countries, tax revenues are
5,000 times higher
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Infrastructure problems

• Tobacco is a global problem, yet there is no
  global center for coordinating and supporting
  tobacco control research
• Disjointed and overlapping research activities
• Data sources that are either absent or unreliable
  
• Not able to respond rapidly to relevant research
  opportunities
• Lack of capacity to do research, especially in
  developing countries

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Are we ready for change?
We still have a lot of work to do
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Scholarly activism
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First-Ever Comprehensive Country-by-Country
Assessment

• Assesses implementation and enforcement of
  MPOWER
• Countries need to do much more
• Some progress, but no country fully implements
  even 5 of the 6 key interventions
• Tobacco control requires political commitment
  from all levels of government and engagement by
  civil society

No policy
Minimal
Moderate
Complete
No data
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Only 5 of World Covered by Effective Tobacco
Control Policies
5 or less benefit from effective interventions
to reduce use
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Individual Country Reports
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Regional SummariesExample South-East Asia