WHO-ERS project on smoking cessation in primary care in countries with high prevalence of tobacco use. First year experience

Aim: In 2016, WHO and ERS, formed a novel collaboration -a successive 3y project to support WHO’s training activities for building capacity of WHO Member States to provide tobacco cessation interventions (TCIs) to all patients with respiratory diseases, both in hospital and primary care settings. 3 countries with high prevalence of tobacco use and low availability of cessation support were selected as target countries to implement the Year 1 project (Greece, Republic of Moldova, Bangladesh). Methods: 1) A national training network capable of further training HCPs was established to provide brief TCIs to respiratory patients, 2)an online 6-module training course on brief TCIs for health professionals was developed in English. The train-the-trainer workshops were jointly conducted by WHO and ERS experts as 30 HCPs were trained on brief TCIs in each country and subsequently endorsed to train others through structured cascading training programs (Fig1). Consequently, the national training teams conducted 4-6 training workshops for primary care providers(PCP) from 2-4 cities in each country. All trained PCPs were supported to deliver 5As/5Rs brief TCIs. Results: (Fig1) More than 10,000 smokers were enrolled and given brief advice on quitting as existing training centres for on-the-job training of PCPs were strengthened in each of the 3 countries to train PCPs on brief TCIs. Success quitting rates at 1month were rather high (37,1%,31,7% &48,4%) although from unexperienced HCPs. WHO-ERS collaboration could improve and sustain structural elements paramount to promoting tobacco cessation and significantly impacting in reducing tobacco use in the target countries.