Evidence to Guide Action: Comprehensive Tobacco Control in Ontario

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Evidence to Guide Action: Comprehensive Tobacco Control in Ontario

A report of the Smoke-Free Ontario – Scientific Advisory Committee

In late 2009, PHO assembled the Smoke-Free Ontario-Scientific Advisory Committee (SFO-SAC) to provide evidence-informed scientific and technical advice to support the renewal of the Ministry of Health Promotion and Sport’s (MHPS) Smoke-Free Ontario strategy for 2010-15.

This committee consisted of leading tobacco control scientists, researchers and practitioners from across Ontario. The approach to SFO-SAC was consistent with PHO’s mandate as a hub organization, linking practitioners and researchers to provide scientific and technical advice to those working to protect and promote the health of Ontarians and reduce inequities in health.

Over the course of six months, SFO-SAC reviewed and deliberated the most recent scientific and practice-based evidence in comprehensive tobacco control. An impartial process facilitated input from international tobacco control experts, key informants and other experts. The work was completed in April 2010, with the transmission of the committee’s report, Evidence to Guide Action: Comprehensive Tobacco Control in Ontario, to MHPS. The evidence base in this report has also been used by MPHS' Tobacco Strategy Advisory Group (TSAG) to inform their advice to government. TSAG’s report, Building On Our Gains, Taking Action Now: Ontario’s Tobacco Control Strategy for 2011 – 2016, was released on October 19, 2010.

In terms of addressing the traditional pillars of comprehensive tobacco control, Evidence to Guide Action presents many novel insights and recommendations, including:

prevention: encouraging and supporting youth and young adults to remain tobacco-free during this period of their lives
protection: addressing protection from both physical and social exposure to tobacco smoke, including addressing social norms as a key element of protection
cessation: creating an integrated, comprehensive, easy-to-access systems approach to cessation

In addition, we have broken new ground on confronting the tobacco disease vector, addressing tobacco-related disparities and health equity, and identifying key system enablers for comprehensive tobacco control. Logic models have also been formulated to help organize the distribution and sequencing of inputs for the next generation of tobacco control interventions.

Evidence to Guide Action establishes a new benchmark in bringing evidence to inform comprehensive tobacco control and positions Ontario to maintain its leadership on this important public health issue.

SFO-SAC report webinar

We encourage you to use Evidence to Guide Action to inform your local planning and interventions. To help in this learning process, a webinar for local tobacco control practitioners was conducted in October 2010, with the assistance of the Program Training and Consultation Centre (PTCC) at Cancer Care Ontario. Participants included medical officers of health, tobacco control coordinators, youth development specialists, tobacco control area network coordinators and other practitioners working in tobacco control at the local level.

Evidence to Guide Action: Comprehensive Tobacco Control in Ontario

A copy of the webinar presentation and audio recording may be obtained on the PTCC website by clicking here. Please note that some of the resources are only accessible to members of the PTCC website. To apply for membership, visit the PTCC homepage at: www.ptcc-cfc.on.ca.

PTCC has also developed an accompanying report to inform tobacco control planning and program development: Comprehensive Tobacco Control: Potential Applications for Local Public Health Departments. Drawing on the evidence presented in Evidence to Guide Action over 50 potential public health actions are presented. These actions are aligned with both the SFO-SAC’s goals and the Ontario Public Health Standards Requirements. The report can be downloaded here.