Community Intervention for Tobacco Control (COMMIT)

Works for Community Academic Partnership for Tobacco Control.

Undergoing Projects

 

Development of "QUIT LINE", a tobacco control help line for the community

Project Director: Sanghamitra Pati

Coordinators : Dr Soumyakanta Das, Mr S.K.Sadangi, Dr Sonali Kar, Dr Bikash Prasad, Banalata Sarangi, Mrs Smita Rath, Dr Sandipana Pati, Dr Tapaswini Das, Ms. Nivedita Das, Mrs Jyoti Kar.

Tobacco Prevention Education for Men through Hair Cutting Salons

Principal Investigators: Dr Sanghamitra Pati, Mr Rajeev Ranjan

Coordinators: Rohit Prajapati, Rakesh Kumar , Rajendra Mishra, Haribandhu Gouda, Atulya Swain , Umakanta Mohanty.

This project is being piloted in the Chaibasa district of Jharkhand and Bhubaneswar town of Orissa with an aim to create tobacco awareness and disseminate tobacco related health information and its prevention among men through gent’s hair cutting saloons. Such project is first of its kind to be taken up in this part of India.

HELP : Health Professional and Tobacco Control

Health care professionals bear significant responsibility to address tobacco, given that opportunistic advice from a doctor has been shown to promote smoking cessation in patients. To have a sustainable critical mass of competent and skilled physicians in tobacco cessation and treatment it is imperative that they should acquire the basic knowledge and skills. Health care personnel and students should be familiar with the negative health effects of tobacco; they should possess adequate knowledge base and inculcate specific patient-centered smoking cessation counseling skills during the formative years. There is no area of medical education and preventive medicines that will yield greater returns in better health, saved lives, and reduce medical costs than emphasis on tobacco cessation. However, the large mass of health acre professionals have remained an unexplored potential and missed opportunity in the battle against tobacco epidemic. Keeping this in view, the present initiative was undertaken to develop skills and competence of health care professionals pertaining to tobacco prevention, cessation and control.

Undergoing Project

Integration of Tobacco Control into Health Profession Education through Curricular Innovation.

Program Director: Dr Sanghamitra Pati

Coordinators: Dr SoumyakantaDas, Dr Jayanti Mishra, Dr Hemamalini Rath, Dr Sonali Kar

Completed Projects

Principal Investigator : Dr. Sanghamitra Pati

Identification of Tobacco Control Competencies of Medical and Dental Curriculum (India) (2008)

Tobacco smoking is the leading cause of morbidity and premature mortality in India. To deal with the problem we need to have a sustainable critical mass of competent and skilled health care personnel in tobacco cessation and treatment. It is also imperative that they should acquire the basic knowledge and skills as a component of their professional education. Medical, dental, nursing, physiotherapy and paramedical students should be familiar with the negative health effects of tobacco; they should possess adequate knowledge base and inculcate specific client-centered tobacco cessation counseling skills during the formative years. There is no area of health profession education that will yield greater returns in better health, saved lives, and reduce medical costs than emphasis on tobacco control. Keeping this in view, the present work was undertaken to assess the content of different health profession curricula of India in the context of tobacco control and identify the relevant tobacco control competence of the teaching modules. The analysis revealed that the under graduate medical curriculum of all the medical colleges have some tobacco related content particularly under the teaching of pathology and community medicine. But they are limited to the disease and clinical aspects. No specific time slot is allotted for tobacco control in particular. In comparison to the western world, it appears that Indian health education system lacks the appropriate integration of tobacco into various health profession courses. The large mass of students has remained an unexplored potential. There is a strong need for sensitization of the concerned curriculum designers in this regard. Efforts should be taken to include tobacco particularly tobacco abuse prevention and cessation. The respective apex councils of India i.e. Medical council, nursing council, dental council and national associations should take a proactive role in prioritizing tobacco information through the health profession education and promoting a culture that builds competency in tobacco prevention and treatment.

Indian Medical Education in the context of Tobacco control : Faculty Perception (2008)

Tobacco smoking is a significant public health issue in India. Health professionals play a crucial role in reducing the impact of tobacco. Past studies reveal that most of the physicians are not providing tobacco cessation counseling to their patients. The present work was undertaken to assess the medical curriculum and teaching India in the context of tobacco. The study was completed by the medical faculty and comprised: tobacco content and skills, curricular evaluation, faculty perceptions. The under-graduate medical curriculum has some tobacco-related content. Most of the medical colleges provide less than 12 hours of teaching on the adverse health effects of tobacco. There is no training on tobacco prevention during internship. Students don’t learn tobacco cessation during their clinical years. Post-graduation students excepting three disciplines don’t receive teaching in tobacco control. It is the general belief among the faculty that tobacco abuse is not under the domain of medical education. Analyses of the extant medical curriculum in India reveal that although negative effects of tobacco is incorporated in some ways in the curricula, it is neither systematic nor vertically integrated and makes no mention of the issues of skills and competence surrounding anti tobacco counseling. In comparison to the western world, Indian medical education lacks the appropriate incorporation of tobacco into medical courses. There is a strong necessity to include tobacco particularly tobacco abuse prevention and cessation.

A Smoking-Cessation and Prevention Skill Building Program for Medical Students (2007).
(This work has received APACT Award in Taipei, Taiwan)

Training medical students in tobacco prevention and treatment skills is critical if we are to have competent physicians, prepared to address the grave levels of morbidity and mortality associated with tobacco use. Medical students should possess adequate knowledge of health risks of tobacco use and they should acquire appropriate skills for helping their patients in smoking prevention and cessation. Both of these are complementary to each other towards preparing health professionals for leadership roles in tobacco control. However, in India, enough attention has not been given to elicit the active participation of physicians in tobacco control. Particularly, the medical students have remained an unexplored potential and the missed opportunity. As a result, most of the physicians lack the necessary skills, competence and above all the confidence to handle the problem of smoking cessation among their patients. Keeping this in view a project was taken up to develop skills and competence of medical students with the objective of improving medical student inquiry into smoking and the delivery of advice accordingly for patients in their clinical years routine consultations. We attempted to determine whether a curriculum on tobacco intervention could garner medical students’ acceptance; improve relevant knowledge, attitudes, and self-confidence; and be applied in students’ early clinical experience. The targeted learners were the 149 first-year medical students. The program was carried out during the inter semester summer break period. We used motivational interviewing as a framework for promoting behavior change. A tobacco control curriculum was developed from the materials of the motivational interviewing and other standardized international tobacco control curricula of proven efficacy. The teaching comprised of detailed studying of the manual, followed by an interactive workshop and finally concluded with a modified Objective Structured Clinical Skills Examination Station. The faculty found that all students demonstrated basic competence. Students were encouraged to apply the learnt skills during their ward duty in 3rd semester in which each student spent2 half-days per month with patients under the supervision of a senior resident. Student endorsement of the curriculum and its components was assessed by a confidential evaluation questionnaire, which was administered at the conclusion of their training. Students provided ratings using 7-point Likert-type scales with anchors at the midpoints and the extremes. Gains in students’ attitudes, knowledge, and self confidence were gauzed by comparing responses to pretest and posttest versions of the Learning Outcomes Questionnaire (LOQ).The evaluation showed that first-year medical students favorably received the initial implementation of the tobacco control curriculum. Most students found the educational content important and appropriate for their level of training. Medical students in their early years can gain from training on promoting behavior change. It is highly recommended that such curricular innovation should be initiated at a priority basis.

Tobacco Cessation Practices among Health Professionals in Orissa ,India (2006)

Health Professionals, particularly the general practitioners are in a strategic position to provide direct services for tobacco cessation. However, to date, in India, only about 0.5% of smokers receive cessation counseling from their physicians. The present study assessed the attitude and practice of tobacco cessation among health professionals and explored the potential barriers to physicians-based tobacco cessation practice. A total of 720 general practitioners, 280 in Rural and 440 in Southern Orissa, were interviewed regarding their personal tobacco use and their general attitude, knowledge and approach with patients regarding tobacco cessation practice. 29% of GPs in the study were found to be using either smoking or smokeless form of tobacco, with a higher prevalence in the rural area. Almost all GPs considered that giving information about tobacco cessation to their patients is an important intervention to control tobacco related diseases. 67% GPs feel that cessation counseling is not part of their job, and 45% think their patients will not accept their advice. With regard to beliefs about the provision of cessation counseling to patients, 86% of GPs lack confidence in providing such counseling; and 83% would like to be trained on tobacco cessation strategies. The GPs who use tobacco were less inclined to provide cessation counseling than their nonsmoker counterparts. Thus in order to implement tobacco control in clinical practice in India, it appears essential first to reduce the number of GPs who smoke/chew tobacco and to improve GP training on tobacco cessation procedures.

Attitude to tobacco control among medical interns of Orissa, India (2005)

This study using both quantitative and qualitative research methodology explored the attitude of medical interns towards tobacco control and tobacco cessation counseling in the general practice. Majority of interns expresses their willingness to learn the counseling skills pertaining to tobacco cessation and they felt internship would be the optimal stage to get such training. Almost all the interns agreed that tobacco control should be a part of medical education and it should be integrated phase wise without overburdening the medical curriculum. It was further suggested by some interns that inter semester or post examination breaks could be productively utilized for the tobacco prevention skill building program.

SAY NO TO TOBACCO (SNOT)

"Say NO to Tobacco" (SNOT) initiative is a campus based tobacco awareness program across the four states of eastern India: Orissa, Jharkhand, Bihar, and West Bengal. Right now the program is organizing creative writing, painting, and quiz competitions in different schools, colleges and health care institutes with an aim to create awareness among the student population regarding Tobacco abuse and the harmful effects of Tobacco.

SNOT Events

Tobacco Control in the Workplace (TOW)

An Initiative towards tobacco prevention and control in the worksite