January 14, 2009

Contact:
Jeremy Craig, 404-413-1357
University Relations

Georgia State tobacco control expert works to stamp out smoking in China

ATLANTA – China is home to more than 300 million smokers – more than the entire U.S. population – making it by far the highest tobacco-consuming nation in the world.

Inevitably, this means the loss of countless lives from a completely preventable cause of death, and human and financial costs that will harm the nation’s future.

Now, as part of effort funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a Georgia State University professor and tobacco control expert will help those concerned with smoking in China to craft media and communications strategies to help change how tobacco use is viewed in a country where a majority of doctors smoke.

Michael Eriksen, director of Georgia State University’s Institute of Public Health is a co-principal investigator with Jeffrey Koplan and Kathy Miner of Emory University as part of the Emory Global Health Institute China Tobacco Partnership, funded by a five-year, $14 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reduce the burden of tobacco use in China. The project is coordinated by the Emory Global Health Institute.

“One third of all the cigarettes in the world are smoked in China," said Eriksen, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office on Smoking and Health. “And these cigarettes are just smoked by men.  Currently, 60 percent of men and only 6 percent of women smoke.  In fact, Chinese women are more likely to die from exposure to secondhand smoke than from smoking itself.  If Chinese women start to smoke like Chinese men, it will be an unmitigated public health disaster. “

In the United States, it took nearly half a century to change how smoking was viewed — from a once normal, socially-acceptable activity to one now banned in most public places and recognized as a risk not just to smokers themselves, but to the public as well.

In the end, neither Eriksen nor his colleagues will, or can, dictate what the Chinese should do to stem smoking. Instead, the Atlanta-based scholars will help those in China concerned with smoking's public health impacts to find their own solutions.
“There have to be solutions which are embraced by the Chinese, and are compatible within their culture,” Eriksen said. “We will try to figure out what that is and to marshal the evidence to make those solutions successful, so it doesn't take as long for China to reduce smoking rates as it did for the United States.”

The project will include collaboration with the American Cancer Society and the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. Additionally under the grant, the team will work with cities in China which are interested in reducing tobacco use, and will also work to establish a center for excellence at a Chinese university to help serve as a focal point for expertise and research into the problem.