By Thomas J. Glynn, PhD, Director, Cancer Science and Trends and Director, International Cancer Control, American Cancer Society
In a recent editorial in the journal Tobacco Control, Kenneth Warner, PhD, Professor, School of Public Health, University of Michigan noted that everyone shares the same vision of the final words to the global tobacco epidemic story: The end. In the same issue, journal editor Ruth Malone urged the global public health community to consider an “endgame” scenario for tobacco use by “imagining things otherwise.”
These three themes – “the end,” “imagining things otherwise,” and an “endgame” scenario for tobacco use – are the subject of the International Conference on Public Health in the 21st Century: The Endgame for Tobacco. The conference, which is being held September 10-12 in New Delhi, India, is being hosted by the Public Health Foundation of India and counts among its primary sponsors the American Cancer Society, as well as the World Health Organization, the World Heart Federation, the World Bank, and many other domestic and international organizations, both public and private.
As the world heads toward the unthinkable toll of one billion deaths due to tobacco use in this century, researchers, scientists, physicians, nurses, economists, policy makers, and many others are gathering in New Delhi to discuss, in concrete terms, how to reverse the course of the tobacco epidemic and avoid the specter of one billion deaths. Conference attendees, including invited Society staff and grantees, will be doing this by reviewing available data and policies, defining the “endgame” for tobacco use (e.g., reducing global smoking prevalence from the current 25 to 5 percent and ultimately to no tobacco use whatsoever). And, in Malone’s words, they will be “imagining things otherwise” – by developing new and creative approaches to working with the public and private sectors, considering harm reduction as an option, etc.
Conference president Dr. K. Srinath Reddy, who is president of the Public Health Foundation of India, has noted the urgency of the need for an “endgame” plan, especially as the tobacco epidemic gains foothold in the low- and middle-income countries that had previously been less prone to tobacco use, compared to the industrialized western countries, where tobacco use is now on a slow decline. Due to the American Cancer Society’s longtime support for global tobacco control issues, Reddy and the conference organizers have closely involved the Society in the planning and, now the execution, of the conference.
John R. Seffrin, PhD, the Society’s chief executive officer, serves on the conference’s International Advisory Committee, I serve on the International Scientific Committee, and Jacqui Drope, the Society’s Global Tobacco Control managing director, has organized a symposium addressing how cancer societies can contribute to endgame plans.
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