Building research capacity for evidence-informed tobacco control in Canada: a case description

Early tobacco control interventions were heavily influenced by research evidence demonstrating the health burden associated with tobacco use. For example, the 1962 report by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in the United Kingdom prompted countries such as Sweden to dedicate large sums of government funding for public education campaigns [1]. The 1964 United States Surgeon General Report provided a similar foundation for tobacco control in North America [2]. More recently, comprehensive scientific summaries have been used to inform the development of clinical practice guidelines for smoking cessation in several countries, as well the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control [3].Despite significant progress even relatively aggressive, sustained strategies such as the tobacco control program in California [4] have failed to reduce the prevalence of adult tobacco use to below 12 percent. Moreover, the characteristics and behaviours of smokers today are substantially different from the characteristics and behaviours of the smokers on which current interventions were tested. As such, continued reductions in tobacco use and its associated health and economic burden will require the development and successful implementation of new strategies. Having sufficient numbers and adequate distribution of well trained, innovative and knowledgeable researchers who value practice- and/or policy-relevant research will be of paramount importance for achieving this aim.Evidence-informed policies and programs can easily be impeded when there is insufficient capacity to produce new and/or relevant research to meet the information needs of decision makers in a timely manner. For example, the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS), a non-profit organization dedicated to cancer control, demonstrated this lack of alignment between research and the needs of public health practitioners and policy makers. The CCS commissioned a research team to answer four basic ques