Data translation: what can injury prevention and safety promotion learn from the tobacco control data-policy nexus?

The science of tobacco control can serve as a blueprint for action in injury prevention, obesity, and other public health issues. This paper reviews the lessons learned by health advocates in working to produce meaningful policy change on tobacco. By the late 1950s, it became apparent that tobacco control had to move beyond the traditional methods, namely education and treatment to focus on broader environmental factors that affect the whole population in order to influence individual behaviour. The availability, affordability and social acceptability of a drug are major determinants of use. So health advocates tried to change the environment to make 'healthy choices easy choices, and unhealthy choices more difficult." Increasing the tax on tobacco products, restricting smoking in public places and banning tobacco advertising helped reduce the affordability and acceptability of tobacco and yielded significant declines in usage. So following work in the tobacco control arena it is clear that policy and legislative change are contingent on providing politicians with answers to three questions: (1) Why is there a need for action; (2) What interventions work and; (3) What are the social and economic costs? If clear health benefits can be realised at a reasonable cost, decisionmakers will usually support health legislation.