European Regulatory Science on Tobacco: Policy implementation to reduce lung diseases

EUREST-PLUS, a thirteen-partner EU joint project, coordinated by ENSP (Coordinator: Constantine Vardavas), aims to monitor and evaluate the impact of the TPD at an EU level. The main objective of EUREST-PLUS is to monitor and evaluate the impact of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) within the context of the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) ratification at a European level. For complete information about this project, please go to http://ensp.network/eurest-plus/.

The EUREST-PLUS Project will perform 4 central tasks:

• To evaluate the psychosocial and behavioral impact of TPD implementation and FCTC implementation, through the creation of a longitudinal cohort of adult smokers in 6 EU MS (Germany, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Spain; total n=6000) in a pre- vs. post-TPD study design (Work Package (WP) 2&3).
• To assess support for TPD implementation through secondary dataset analyses of the 2015 Special Eurobarometer on Tobacco Survey (SETS), in WP5 and to monitor progress in FCTC implementation in the EU from 2009-2015.
• To document changes in e-cigarette product parameters (technical design, labelling/packaging and chemical composition) following TPD implementation of Article 20 of the TPD (WP6).
• To enhance innovative joint research collaborations on chronic, non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and in vulnerable populations in high-income countries (WP4).

The activities of the five research-oriented work packages in fulfilling these objectives will be facilitated by an administrative work package (WP1), and by a specific work package dedicated to planning and implementing targeted dissemination activities to maximize the impact of research findings of the EUREST-PLUS Project (WP7). New knowledge produced will be disseminated through multiple avenues targeted at the general public, the media, researchers, patient networks and policy makers.

EUREST-PLUS team, April 4, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 681109) and the University of Waterloo.