ASTRA is a world-class, international and interdisciplinary group, aiming to reduce the substantial burden of disease caused by smokeless tobacco. Smokeless tobacco is responsible for thousands of deaths per year, but has so far been neglected in policy and research. ASTRA’s international teams will carry out policy research and develop interventions to address the problems caused by smokeless tobacco use in South Asia. Our focus is on Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, where 80% of the world’s 300 million smokeless tobacco users live, and where the most harmful types of smokeless tobacco are favoured. ASTRA is a three-year programme, with a budget of £2M. Dr Subhash Pokhrel and Ms Kathryn Coyle from Health Economics Theme are leading Economics study within ASTRA with an aim to quantify the healthcare costs of smokeless tobacco use in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
Aims of ASTRA:
- To gather evidence about how the policies recommended by the WHO-FCTC are being developed and implemented for smokeless tobacco in LMICs. This part of the programme will focus on young people, since 90% of ST users start their habit during adolescence.
- To develop and evaluate interventions, such as behavioural support or medicines, to help adult ST users to quit.
- To build capacity, by training research teams at LMIC institutions to conduct high quality applied health research in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.
- To use this capacity to support wider tobacco control efforts in the South Asia region.
View on YouTube
Meet the Principal Investigator(s) for the project
Related Research Group(s)
Health Economics (HERG) - Our strategic focus is on economic evaluation and systematic reviews of a broad range of clinical and health service technologies by providing high-quality, applied, policy-relevant research, as well as developing and refining methods to increase the rigour and relevance of such studies.
Partnering with confidence
Organisations interested in our research can partner with us with confidence backed by an external and independent benchmark: The Knowledge Exchange Framework. Read more.
Project last modified 20/10/2021