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Criteria for evaluating tobacco control research funding programs and their application to models that include financial support from the tobacco industry

J E Cohen^1,2, M Zeller³, T Eissenberg⁴, M Parascandola⁵, R O’Keefe⁶, L Planinac¹, S Leischow⁷

¹ Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
² University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
³ Pinney Associates, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
⁴ Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA
⁵ National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
⁶ Health Effects Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
⁷ University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

J E Cohen, University of Toronto, 33 Russell Street, T5, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2S1; Joanna_cohen@camh.net

Received 14 September 2008

Accepted 10 February 2009

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Much has been discussed and written about the purposes, outcomes and ethics related to tobacco industry funding of research.^1–9 The issue is controversial because of tobacco industry funding mechanisms that have been used by the tobacco industry to gain credibility and to advance the industry’s interests, which may come at the expense of public health;⁶ at the same time others have argued that, given the scarcity of funding from other sources, tobacco industry support may be defensible, at least under some circumstances.¹⁰ These concerns raise the question of whether there could be a model of tobacco company funding that would be acceptable to the tobacco control research community. This paper presents a set of criteria for evaluating funding models and applies them to four diverse models.

While tobacco consumption and prevalence rates have declined in many developed countries over the past 40 years, the projections are that worldwide tobacco-related deaths . . . [Full text of this article]

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