The AUA School of Public Health’s (SPH) Center for Health Services Research and Development (CHSR) Senior Researcher Arusyak Harutyunyan, MD, MPH and Research Assistant Armine Abrahamyan, MS, MPH along with seven physicians from Yerevan and Gyumri completed the EPACTT-Treating Tobacco Dependence Training course and participated in the European Network for Smoking and Tobacco Prevention (ENSP) Conference on Tobacco Control: Research, Prevention and Treatment in Brussels, Belgium, 5-7 April, 2016. The organizers have also invited Dr. Narine Movsisyan to the training and the conference. There was a special plenary session on European Research Projects at the European Parliament.
At the request of organizers, Dr. Arusyak Harutyunyan made two oral presentations during the conference and the training on “Availability, Affordability, and Prices of Smoking Cessation Products in 9 Countries: Preliminary Findings” and “Smoking Cessation Services in Armenia.” The abstracts are published in the Journal of Tobacco Prevention and Cessation 2016, Volume 2, supplement 2.
Participants of the training included healthcare professionals from 5 eastern European Countries (Armenia, Georgia, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine). The training program was fully accredited by the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (EACCME) and granted 11 continuous medical education (CME) credits. The goal of the EPACTT (European Accreditation Curriculum on Tobacco Treatment) project is to develop an accreditation curriculum for tobacco cessation clinicians in Eastern Europe and to build a network of accredited healthcare professionals dedicated to advancing evidence-based tobacco dependence treatment and advocates for tobacco control policies. It is supported by the Global Bridges through an Independent grant for Learning & Change (IGL&C), Pfizer.
In the scope of this project the the CHSR team translated and adapted the second edition of the European Smoking Cessation Guideline, prepared training materials in Armenian. The CHRS team was also reponsible for the selection and coordination of the trainees from Armenia. This training program was an important step in the development of the smoking cessation services in Armenia.
The AUA School of Public Health works actively to improve population health and health services in Armenia and the region through interdisciplinary education and development of public health professionals to be leaders in public health, health services research and evaluation, and health care delivery and management.
