142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

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309009
Assessment of compliance with tobacco packaging and labeling policies across 14 low and middle income countries

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Carmen Washington, MPH, MSW , Institute for Global Tobacco Control, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Katherine Clegg Smith, PhD , Department of Health, Behavior and Society, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Alison Vadnais
Jennifer Brown, MPH , Institute for Global Tobacco Control, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Laura Kroart, BA , Institute for Global Tobacco Control, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Joanna Cohen, PhD , Department of Health, Behavior and Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Article 11 of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) requires that Parties to the Convention implement effective tobacco packaging and labeling measures  to increase public awareness of the negative health impacts of tobacco products.  We present findings on compliance with required health warnings on tobacco packages for the 14 low- and middle-income countries with the greatest number of smokers.

In 2013 we established a global tobacco packaging surveillance system by systematically purchasing packs of cigarettes, kretek and bidis in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Viet Nam. In each country, data collection was conducted with vendors in low, middle, and high socioeconomic areas of three cities. We purposively selected cities based on population size and cultural, geographic, and linguistic diversity.

We collected 3,335 unique tobacco packs in total and assessed policy compliance on a number of country-specific factors including warning label size and layout, type of warning, language, presence of misleading descriptors, placement of warnings, and obstruction or distortion of health warnings. Preliminary findings reveal color distortion and image distortion on pictorial health warnings, the presence of expired health warning labels, and imported or smuggled packs. Findings provide valuable compliance information and help identify patterns regarding issues of non-compliance across brands and between countries. Findings may inform advocacy efforts for packaging requirements that are compliant with the FCTC as well as improved implementation of current laws.

Learning Areas:

Communication and informatics
Public health or related laws, regulations, standards, or guidelines
Public health or related public policy
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
Explain the principles for establishing a surveillance system for tobacco packaging that can be applied across countries Identify patterns regarding issues of non-compliance of tobacco packaging with required health warnings across 14 countries Identify key elements for global policy initiatives to strengthen packaging and labeling laws and improve implementation of existing laws

Keyword(s): Policy/Policy Development, Tobacco Control

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a research coordinator at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Institute for Global Tobacco control and have been working in tobacco control advocacy and research for 8 years.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.