RESEARCH PAPER

Building capacity for tobacco control research and policy

F Stillman¹, G Yang², V Figueiredo³, M Hernandez-Avila⁴ and J Samet¹

¹ Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
² Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, PR China
³ Instituto Nacional de Câncer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
⁴ Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública, Cuernavaca, Morelos, México

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Frances Stillman
Institute for Global Tobacco Control, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St, W6027, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA; fstillma{at}jhsph.edu

The Fogarty International Center (FIC) initiative, "International Tobacco and Health Research Capacity Building Program" represents an important step in US government funding for global tobacco control. Low- and middle-income countries of the world face a rising threat to public health from the rapidly escalating epidemic of tobacco use. Many are now parties to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and capacity development to meet FCTC provisions. One initial grant provided through the FIC was to the Institute for Global Tobacco Control (IGTC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) to support capacity building and research programmes in China, Brazil, and Mexico. The initiative’s capacity building effort focused on: (1) building the evidence base for tobacco control, (2) expanding the infrastructure of each country to deliver tobacco control, and (3) developing the next generation of leaders as well as encouraging networking throughout the country and with neighbouring countries. This paper describes the approach taken and the research foci, as well some of the main outcomes and some identified challenges posed by the effort. Individual research papers are in progress to provide more in-depth reporting of study results.

Abbreviations: FCTC, Framework Convention on Tobacco Control; FIC, Fogarty International Center; IGTC, Institute for Global Tobacco Control; INCA, Brazilian National Cancer Institute; INSP, Mexican National Institute for Public Health; JHSPH, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Keywords: tobacco control; capacity development; tobacco control training; tobacco control research; second hand smoke; economic; youth

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