WHO has launched an online course on tobacco product regulation in response to the need for clear, practical guidance on tobacco product regulation. The course is based on Tobacco Product Regulation: Basic Handbook, a basic reference document for non-scientist regulators in any country and tool for health authorities and other interested parties seeking resources and planning on how to monitor, evaluate, and regulate tobacco products. Further, the handbook includes relevant country case studies detailing specific approaches enacted globally.
Although tobacco product use is a major public health problem, tobacco products are one of the few openly available consumer products that are virtually unregulated in terms of contents, emissions and design features. Countries hesitate to implement regulations in this area, partly due to the associated challenges, the highly technical nature of this policy intervention and the difficulties in translating science into regulation. The handbook provides authoritative guidance on tobacco product regulation, especially in line with the requirements of Articles 9 and 10 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), in response to countries’ requests. Failure to regulate tobacco products represents a missed opportunity as tobacco product regulation, in the context of comprehensive control, is a valuable tool that could complement other tried and tested tobacco control interventions, such as raising taxes, smoke-free environments, etc.
Language: English
Tobacco
Course information
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Overview: Welcome to the online course on the basics of tobacco product regulation. Although tobacco use is a major public health problem, tobacco products are one of the few openly available consumer products that are virtually unregulated in many countries for contents, emissions and design features. In recent years, health authorities have become increasingly interested in the potential of tobacco product regulation to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with tobacco use. However, barriers to implementing appropriate regulation include limited understanding of common approaches or best practices, and a lack of adequate resources and/or technical capacity.
In this three part series, you will first review the basics of tobacco product regulation and international guidance (Sections 1-2), steps to assessing regulatory needs and capacity and regulatory considerations (Sections 3-4), and finally, implementation and potential challenges, novel, new and modified tobacco or related products, and testing and disclosure (Sections 5-7).
Learning objectives: By the end of this course, participants should be able to describe the basics of tobacco product regulation and how they can be applied to their country context.
Course duration: Approximately 3 hours.
Certificates: A certificate of achievement is issued to those who have completed the course material and earned more than 80% of the maximum number of points from all graded assignments. Participants who receive a Record of Achievement can also download an Open Badge for this course. Click here to learn how.
After completing this course, should you be interested in learning about building laboratory testing capacity for tobacco product regulation, please refer to the OpenWHO course Tobacco product regulation: Building laboratory testing capacity: https://openwho.org/courses/TPRS-building-laboratory-testing-capacity
Course contents
Part I: Overview of tobacco product regulation:
Part I of III of the Tobacco Product Regulation Handbook online training module is comprised of two sections: (1) Introduction to the basics of tobacco product regulation and (2) International guidance on tobacco product regulation.Part II: Regulatory needs, capacity and considerations:
Part II of III of the Tobacco Product Regulation Handbook online training module is comprised of two sections: (3) First steps: assessing regulatory needs and capacity and (4) Regulatory considerations in advance implementation.Part III: Implementation, testing and other related challenges:
Part III of III of the Tobacco Product Regulation Handbook online training module is comprised of three sections: (5) Implementation and potential challenges; (6) Novel, new and modified tobacco or related products; and (7) Testing and disclosure.Course credits:
List of technical contributions to course development.
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Certificate Requirements
- Gain a Record of Achievement by earning at least 80% of the maximum number of points from all graded assignments.