Funding Agency: Presented by Global Bridges Healthcare Alliance for Tobacco Dependence Treatment, hosted by Mayo Clinic, and Pfizer Independent Grants for Learning & Change
The goal of the project is to design, implement and evaluate an advocacy and training program for integrating tobacco control measures into tuberculosis (TB) care in Armenia through following objectives:
- Establishing a nationwide healthcare professional partnership between the National TB Control Center and the National Tobacco Control Program.
- Developing capacity for enforcing a policy of smoke-free environments for all facilities where outpatient and inpatient services are delivered to TB suspects and TB patients.
- Building smoking cessation capacity among TB healthcare providers in Armenia through:
- Adaptation of the existing evidence based guidelines for tobacco dependence treatment among TB patients;
- Development and implementation of smoking cessation training on patient counseling and treatment of tobacco dependence for healthcare providers (physicians and nurses) dealing with TB patients.
- Disseminating the results of the project and integration into the European and global smoking cessation networks.
In the frame of establishing a nationwide healthcare professional partnership between the National TB Control Center and the National Tobacco Control Program (objective 1), the CHSR team has established the working group of key stakeholders in the field (the National Institute of Health and the National Tuberculosis Control Center) that will facilitate the development of the joint policy paper. The CHSR team conducted document, policy and literature review on the best joint TB and tobacco control practices, based on which relevant guides were developed. During the pre-intervention data collection focus group discussions (FGD) with TB healthcare specialists and as well as In-depth interviews (IDI) with the experts has started.