The curtain raiser launch of Online Course on Basics Course of Tobacco Control was done during the 48th Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine National Conference organized by Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, PGIMER, Chandigarh amongst 200 participants from all states of India and 50+ faculty of course.
The curtain raiser workshop aimed to enhance knowledge and skills of various stakeholders interested to support tobacco control initiatives in the country along with strengthening the tobacco control policies globally. While appreciating the endeavor to start the online course on basics of tobacco control in near future, Dr. Amarjeet Singh, Professor and Head, Department of Community Medicine & School of Public Health and Chairperson-IAPSMCON2021 told the audience about the felt need of such courses for academicians ,program managers, implementers and various stakeholders. Dr. Sonu Goel, Program Director and Co-organising Secretary of IAPSMCON 2021 provided a brief overview of 3-month course ‘Basics of Tobacco Control’ which will be launched on Learning Management Portal namely e-Learning for Public Health in the first week of May 2021. He provided the glimpse of the course and course structure to the participants.
The 3 months Basics of Tobacco Control course is based upon the concept of “Learning with Fun”which will have mixed learning methodology comprising of presentations, case studies, contextual videos and team building exercises, assignments and energisers. They will also be working with a renowned faculty for their practical work towards end of the course.
The technical sessions of the current curtain raiser workshop started with a session on History of Tobacco Use by Dr. P.C. Gupta, Director, Healis – Sekhsaria Institute of Public Health, Navi Mumbai followed by sessions on Epidemiology of Tobacco Use- Global and India by Dr. Sonu Goel, Professor, PGIMER, and Health impacts smokeless tobacco use by Dr. Poonam Khattar, Head, Dept. of Communication at The National Institute of Health & Family Welfare, New Delhi. A brief introduction and importance of such type of courses was given by Dr. Jagdish Kaur, Regional Advisor, The Union; Dr. Ravi Mehrotra, CEO, India Cancer Research Consortium and Dr. Rakesh Gupta, President, Rajasthan Cancer Foundation. This was followed by the lectures of Dr. Rana J Singh, Deputy Regional Director (T&NCD Control), USEA (The Union) and Dr. L Swasticharan, Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, GOI who gave a brief view of Global Tobacco Control Policies and Legislations being implemented to tackle tobacco menace and the implementation of National Tobacco Control Programme in India respectively.
The last set of lectures were on Indian Tobacco control legislation (COTPA 2003 and Rules) and roles of academic institutes in tobacco control by Dr. Amit Yadav, Technical advisor, The Union, and Dr. Suneela Garg, Head, Dept. of Community Medicine, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi. The event ended with a Post-test and live interaction with experts in the subject of Tobacco from across country.
