Tobacco Control Research

							Tobacco Control Research



     …what is it good for?
    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
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…?
 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)
WHO FCTC has focused our attention
 on reducing future tobacco deaths
                                                          Speed matters
                                  Estimated cumulative tobacco deaths
                                              1950-2050
                                                                                            520
                            500                                                            500
Tobacco deaths (millions)




                            400
                                                                                                  Impact of policies
                                                                                                  depends on
                                                                                            340
                                                                                                  factors including:
                            300

                                                                  220                             – Intervention date
                            200
                                                                                                  – Effect size
                                                                   190

                            100
                                                    70
                               0
                                1950             2000              2025             2050
                                                          Year
                            World Bank. Curbing the epidemic: Governments and the economics of
                            tobacco control. World Bank Publications, 1999. p80.
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)
…are the current research funding priorities of existing
funding agencies consistent with the goal of speeding
          up a decline in tobacco deaths?
Most Countries Have Not
 Implemented Effective
Tobacco Control Policies
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
       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
Are we ready for change?




      We still have a lot of work to do