Speaker: Dr. Mangesh S. Pednekar
Title: Can we scale tobacco control intervention research with school teachers in India?
Date: Friday, June 21, 2019
Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm
Location: LHS 1621
Please join us for a presentation from Dr. Mangesh S. Pednekar about testing the comprehensive tobacco control intervention for teachers in the Indian state of Bihar, representing one of the highest tobacco-using regions among adults and children compared to other regions in India. Teachers are key opinion leaders in relation to community norms generally, and more specifically in relation to school tobacco control efforts, which are often a community’s first step toward broad-based tobacco control efforts. According to the year 2000 Global School Personnel Survey (GSPS), 78% of teachers in Bihar used some form of tobacco. The purpose of this study is to test the efficacy of a comprehensive tobacco control intervention designed to reduce tobacco use among teachers within Bihar schools. This intervention is based on best practices for worksite and school tobacco control interventions, and is being adapted to the unique setting of schools in Bihar.
Dr. Pednekar is the Director of Healis-Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, Navi Mumbai, India. Dr. Pednekar has over 22 years’ extensive experience in national and international collaborative research management and implementation, developing collaborative research projects, and building relationships with researchers in India and globally. His major research interests are tobacco epidemiology, nutrition epidemiology, and NCD epidemiology. He is a Co-Principal investigator of the TCP India Project in collaboration with the ITC Project at the University of Waterloo. He is also Visiting Scientist at the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, USA. He has published over 100 scientific research articles in high-impact national and international journals, and has co-authored numerous books and reports. He has a Doctorate in Epidemiology from the Tampere School of Public Health, University of Tampere, Finland, and a Master’s degree in Statistics from Mumbai University, India.
Sponsored by The International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation (ITC) Project, Department of Psychology and School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo