(A five year project in partnership with Emory University, Armenian National Institute of Health, Armenian National Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Georgian Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and George Washington University)
Funding Agency: US National Institutes of Health, Fogarty International Center
PI: Arusyak Harutyunyan, MD, MPH
The CHSR in partnership with the Emory University received a 5-year award from the U.S.
National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s Fogarty International Center (FIC) to establish tobacco
control models in Armenia and Georgia. It received no cost extension and ended in March 2023.
The aims of the project were: 1) conduct a matched-pair community randomized controlled trial
in 28 municipalities in Georgia and Armenia to examine the impact of local coalitions promoting
the adoption of smoke-free policies in worksites and restaurants, with the primary outcome of
changes in secondhand smoke over time; 2) assess how community context and coalition factors
influence adoption of organizational and municipal smoke-free policies to provide an evidence
base for public health practice; 3) disseminate research findings regarding both the effectiveness
and the process of establishing and maintaining coalitions, and consequently increasing smoke-
free policies and reducing secondhand smoke, to key stakeholders in Georgia and Armenia; and
4) capitalize on the proposed research and dissemination opportunities to build tobacco control
research capacity within the Georgian NCDC, Armenian NIH, and partnering universities, as
well as practice capacity within local public health centers and their civil society partners.
The project built the capacity of Georgian and Armenian researchers to conduct high-quality
mixed methods tobacco research and test the Community Coalition Action Theory as a
framework for impacting local community-driven policy change. Researchers from the American
University of Armenia, Georgia’s National Center for Disease Control (NCDC) and Armenia’s
National Institute of Health (NIH) collaborated with Emory and George Washington University
to execute the proposed research, train tobacco control researchers within their organizations and
partnering universities, and train practitioners within local communities to build local coalitions
for tobacco control policy. Ultimately, the activities in this project served as a catalyst for future
action-oriented science and evidence-based practice to support tobacco control progress in this
region more broadly. The CHSR was responsible for the design, implementation, and analysis of
the coalition members’ surveys, in-depth interviews, as well as design and implementation of the
policy adoption and enforcement tracking system. The team is currently working on manuscripts
for publication in peer-reviewed journals.
See relevant stories with details:
Turpanjian College of Health Sciences Attends 9th European Conference on Tobacco or Health
https://newsroom.aua.am/2022/12/09/turpanjian-college-health-sciences-contributes-developing-
smoke-free-coalitions-armenia/