Today is World No Tobacco Day 2014

Today, 31 May 2014, World No Tobacco Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling on all countries to raise taxes on tobacco.

The most effective approach to controlling the spread of tobacco use is through policies that directly reduce the demand for it. The most potent and cost-effective option for governments everywhere is the simple elevation of tobacco prices by use of consumption taxes.

On average, a 10 percent price increase on cigarettes could reduce demand by about four percent in high-income countries and by 4-8 percent in low- and middle-income countries, where lower incomes tend to make people more sensitive to price changes.

Article 6 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Price and Tax Measures to Reduce the Demand for Tobacco, recognizes the importance of this policy and calls on governments to implement tax and price policies to contribute to their national health objectives.

The WHO is committed to helping governments design intelligent tobacco tax policy that best satisfies these dual goals of tobacco use reduction and revenue generation. An additional benefit of greater revenues through tobacco taxes is the possibility of generating an additional pool of funding for health, a practice recommended by the WHO and being adopted with increasing frequency by countries around the globe.

Learn more by reading the WHO Technical Manual on Tobacco Tax Administration.

Effective tobacco control could prevent 13 million smoking deaths in China by 2050

(World No Tobacco Day is on 31 May 2014. This year’s theme is: Raise taxes on tobacco.)

Photo by IamNotUnique on Flickr, Creative Commons license

Complete implementation of recommended tobacco control policies in China could lead to a reduction of over 40 percent in smoking and prevent almost 13 million tobacco related-deaths by 2050, according to a BMJ study.

These tobacco control policies, mandated by the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), include: surveillance and monitoring of the prevalence of tobacco use, creation of smoke-free environments, treatment of tobacco dependence, taxation on tobacco consumption and other price controls, and enforcement of health warnings on tobacco packages and marketing bans.

The study projected that increasing the tobacco excise tax to 75 percent of the retail price would be the most effective measure, incrementally reducing smoking by 13 percent by 2050.

Comprehensive smoke-free air laws and a well enforced marketing ban also showed potent and immediate effects. Comprehensive smoke-free air laws were projected to yield an almost nine percent reduction in smoking rates by 2015, increasing to about a 10 percent reduction in 2050. A comprehensive marketing ban would reduce smoking rate by about four percent by 2050.

China is the most populous nation in the world, and with over 50 percent of Chinese men smoking, accounts for about a third of the world’s smokers.

Citation:
1. Levy D, Rodriquez-Buño RL, Hu T-W, Moran AE. The potential effects of tobacco control in China: projections from the China SimSmoke simulation model. BMJ 2014; 348: g1134. (open access)

MEDBOX.org: open access healthcare library

MEDBOX is an open access online library for humanitarian professionals working to improve the quality of healthcare worldwide.

An independent internet platform supported by international agencies and scientific institutions active in humanitarian assistance and development work, MEDBOX collates professional guidelines, textbooks and practical documents on health action and makes them accessible to health workers online.

Access to MEDBOX is free of charge, offering currently around 1,200 documents on all aspects of health action.

MEDBOX is still under development and welcomes more documents, training materials and presentations relevant to improve the quality of healthcare. Submit your questions, comments or contributions to: info@medbox.org.

World No Tobacco Day 2014 is coming up

Every year, on 31 May, the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners everywhere mark World No Tobacco Day, highlighting the health risks associated with tobacco use and advocating for effective policies to reduce tobacco consumption. Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of death globally and is currently responsible for 10 percent of adult deaths worldwide.

For World No Tobacco Day 2014, the WHO is calling on countries to raise taxes on tobacco.

Under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), countries should implement tax and price policies on tobacco products as a way to reduce tobacco consumption. Research shows that higher taxes are especially effective in reducing tobacco use among lower-income groups and in preventing young people from starting to smoke. A tax increase that increases tobacco prices by 10 percent decreases tobacco consumption by about four percent in high-income countries and by up to eight percent in most low- and middle-income countries.

Furthermore, increasing excise taxes on tobacco is considered to be the most cost-effective tobacco control measure. The World Health Report 2010 indicated that a 50 percent increase in tobacco excise taxes would generate a little more than US$ 1.4 billion in additional funds in 22 low-income countries. If allocated to health, government health spending in these countries could increase by up to 50 percent.

Learn more about World No Tobacco Day 2014.

How the food industry misleads consumers on sugar

The food industry uses misleading marketing and industry-supported interest groups to obscure the health consequences of added sugar in their products, according to a new report, Sugar-Coating Science: How the Food Industry Misleads Consumers on Sugar, from the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Companies are going out of their way to promote products with added sugar in them as healthier than they really are,” said Deborah Bailin, lead author. “In many cases, they’re adding sugar to otherwise healthy foods and misleading customers about it. It’s not just soda and snacks, either. Added sugar is in everything from bread to salad dressing and even frozen dinners.”

Medical researchers have linked sugar overconsumption to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension. Despite these dangers, companies advertise products with added sugar using healthy-sounding language. For instance, Apple Cinnamon Cheerios are marketed as “whole grain,” which they are, but the product also contains 10 grams of sugar—10 times the amount in General Mills’ regular Cheerios.

Since 1970, average daily U.S. sugar consumption has increased from 74.7 grams to 82.1 grams (20 teaspoons). That is more than double the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s dietary guideline recommendation of no more than 42 grams of sugar a day. The report documents that eating just a few sugar-added products during the day could easily cause someone to exceed the recommendation level.

The food industry spends nearly $7 billion annually advertising its products. About a quarter of its spending is directed at youth advertising and sugar-heavy products make up the bulk of that spending. GoGurt yogurt, for instance, contains large amounts of added sugar, but has been advertised as healthy because it is free of “high fructose corn syrup.” The report also tracks misleading marketing campaigns for sugar-added products that have been specifically directed at women, minorities and low-income consumers.

Food industry-supported interest groups also play a significant role in misinforming the public, the report finds. Court documents recently revealed that the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) paid Berman and Company to run a misleading ad campaign through the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit run by Berman and Company’s founder. The ads conveyed the message that all sugars—whether from corn, cane, and beets—are “natural” and pose no health concerns. This message is misleading, the report says, because it distracts people from the risks associated with over-consuming sugar in any form. In internal emails, CRA’s then-president Audrae Erickson counseled colleagues to deny that CRA was financing the campaign.

The report makes the following recommendations in order to hold the food industry and its interest groups accountable for their efforts to obscure the science on sugar and its detrimental health effects:

• The media should publicly call out sugar interests’ misstatements.
• Scientific experts should disclose all real or perceived conflicts of interest.
• Investors and citizens should pressure companies to align their public messaging with science and to cease funding to trade and front groups that spread misinformation.
• U.S. Congress should restore the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission to their full capacity to regulate marketing to children so that the agencies can regulate youth-targeted marketing.
• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should implement a strong rule requiring the labeling of added sugar in nutrition labels as the agency announced it intends to do.
• Federal, state, and local health agencies should develop aggressive public information campaigns to emphasize the scientific evidence demonstrating sugar’s health impacts and counter the misinformation from sugar interests.

The report is being released at the Science, Democracy, and a Healthy Food Policy forum on integrating public health science into U.S. food policy, sponsored by Union of Concerned Scientists and the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health.

Citation:
1. Bailin D, Goldman G, Phartiyal P. Sugar-Coating Science: How the Food Industry Misleads Consumers on Sugar. Cambridge, Mass.: Union of Concerned Scientists, 2014.

Tobacco imagery on prime time TV in the United Kingdom

Smoking and other tobacco content are common in films marketed to children and young people, but television has the potential to reach far larger audiences than films alone. A British study has found that up to 12 percent of television programming in the United Kingdom, particularly feature films and reality TV, contain tobacco use, predominantly cigarette smoking.

Specific tobacco brand appearances were rare and sometimes occurred in historical footage, but arose predominantly from images of point-of-sale displays broadcast in news and other factual reporting, and in fictional soap opera and other drama.

Tobacco occurred with similar frequency before as after 9:00 p.m., the UK watershed for programs suitable for youth. The estimated number of incidences of exposure of the audience younger than 18 years for any tobacco, actual tobacco use and tobacco branding were 59 million, 16 million and 3 million, respectively on average per week.

“More stringent controls on tobacco in prime time television…have the potential to reduce the uptake of youth smoking in the UK,” the study concluded.

Citation:
1. Lyons A, McNeill A, Britton J. Tobacco imagery on prime time UK television. Tobacco Control 2014; 23: 257-263 (open access)

Forum to tackle food policy and public health: 6 May 2014

The Union of Concerned Scientists is hosting a forum on Science, Democracy, and a Healthy Food Policy on Tuesday, 6 May 2014, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis–and will be available via live webcast.

The forum will provide an opportunity for policy makers, health advocates, and the public to learn how to improve food policy through science from effective local efforts across the United States.

Click here to learn more about the forum and to register.

Live broadcast of Global Cancer Care symposium, 8 February 2014

The Global Oncology Initiative is hosting a symposium, Global Cancer Care: Challenges and Opportunities, on Saturday, 8 February, from 8:00 a.m – 6:00 p.m EST.

A live broadcast will be available on the symposium page.

Symposium topics include:

• Burden of cancer in low- and middle-income countries
• Barriers to cancer therapies in low-resource settings
• Innovative solutions to improve access to cancer care

Keynote presenters include:

• Thomas Gross, MD, PhD, deputy director of science, NCI Center for Global Health
• Rifat Atun, MBBS, MBA, professor of international health management, Imperial College London
• Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, professor of global health and social medicine, Harvard Medical School and co-founder, Partners in Health

Online participation is encouraged. Presenters will answer questions submitted electronically or via social media. Questions may be submitted by using Twitter hashtag #askGlobalOnc, or sending email to studentsforgo@gmail.com.

Follow Global Oncology on Twitter (@GlobalOnc) and Facebook.

The Global Oncology Initiative is an academic and community-­based organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, leading efforts in global oncology and working to improve cancer care and research in resource-sensitive settings.

Smoking down in the U.S.

The proportion of adults in the United States who smoke declined from 20.9 percent in 2005 to 18.1 percent in 2012, according to data from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey.

The smoking rate in 2012 was significantly higher among males (20.5 percent) than females (15.8 percent) and among persons aged 18–24 years (17.3 percent), 25–44 years (21.6 percent), and 45–64 years (19.5 percent) than among those aged 65 years or older (8.9 percent).

The decline in smoking is encouraging and likely reflects the success of tobacco control efforts across the country, according to researchers. For example: the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act granted the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate the manufacture, distribution, and marketing of tobacco products; the 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act raised the federal tax rate for cigarettes from $0.39 to $1.01 per pack; and the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provided expanded coverage for evidence-based smoking-cessation treatments. Also, in 2012 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) debuted Tips from Former Smokers (TIPS), the first federally funded, nationwide, paid-media tobacco education campaign in the United States. During the campaign, calls to the quitline portal 1-800-QUIT-NOW increased 132 percent, and the number of unique visitors to a smoking cessation website (www.smokefree.gov) increased 428 percent. An estimated 1.6 million quit attempts were attributable to the campaign.

Additionally, smoking prevalence was:

• highest among adults of multiple races (26.1 percent) and lowest among Asians (10.7 percent);
• highest among persons with a graduate education development certificate (41.9 percent) and lowest among those with a graduate (5.9 percent) or undergraduate (9.1 percent) degree;
• higher among persons living below the poverty level (27.9 percent) than those living at or above this level (17 percent); and
• higher among people living in the South (19.7 percent) and Midwest (20.6 percent) than those in the West (14.2 percent) and Northeast (16.5 percent).

Citation:
1. Agaku IT, King BA, Dube SR. Current Cigarette Smoking Among Adults—United States, 2005–2012. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 2014; 63(02): 29-34. (open access)

Investing in fruits, vegetables can save lives, reduce health care costs

Increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables could save more than 100,000 lives and $17 billion in health care costs from heart disease each year in the United States, according to a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The report, The $11 Trillion Dollar Reward, explains that better federal agricultural policies, designed to encourage production of healthy food instead of processed junk foods, will help reap those benefits.

If Americans consumed just one additional serving of fruits or vegetables a day, the nation would save $5 billion in health care expenditures and prevent 30,301 heart disease and stroke deaths annually. And if Americans were to go a step further and eat a full 2.5 cups of vegetables and two cups of fruit daily, as recommended by federal dietary guidelines, it could prevent 127,261 deaths each year and save $17 billion in medical costs. The economic value of the lives saved from cardiovascular diseases is an astounding $11 trillion, according to the report.

The report researchers advocate for cost-effective policies that increase access to and reduce the cost of domestically grown fruits and vegetables for consumers, especially for low-income consumers who are hardest hit by cardiovascular disease and other diet-related illnesses. Low-income neighborhoods–where some 30 million Americans reside–are often far from grocery stores and other sources of fresh produce, hindering access.

Current federal agricultural policies channel taxpayer dollars into subsidies for commodity crops, such as corn and soybeans, which are used as feed for livestock, biofuels and as processed food ingredients. These policies offer few incentives for farmers to grow fruits and vegetables–effectively discouraging production of the very foods federal dietary guidelines recommend.

A three-minute video produced by UCS summarizes how we can achieve an $11 trillion reward through forward-looking agricultural policies.

Citation:
1. O’Hara JK. The $11 Trillion Reward: How Simple Dietary Changes Can Save Lives and Money, and How We Get There. Cambridge, Mass.: Union of Concerned Scientists, 2013.