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Linking Global Youth Tobacco Survey Data to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control: the Case for Egypt

  • Tobacco (S Sussman and R Garcia, Section Editors)
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Abstract

Purpose

Limited publications from Egypt have focused on prevalence of tobacco use and tobacco control policy. We used four waves of the Egypt Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) between 2001 and 2014 and a cigarette affordability measure, to evaluate the implementation of the World Health Organization’s MPOWER recommendations.

Findings

Despite Egypt’s implementation of several MPOWER recommendations, the enforcement of laws and regulations may be limited, and therefore had little to no impact on youth current smoking prevalence through 2014. Notably, experimentation with cigarette smoking has significantly increased between waves 2001 and 2014.

Summary

There is a missed opportunity for implementing evidence-based interventions for youth tobacco control in Egypt. There is a strong need for initiatives aiming at meaningful taxation, enforcement of smoking bans in public places, promoting smoke-free homes, appropriate mass media counter-advertising, and effective cessation activities.

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Funding

It was also supported by Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER) under cooperative agreement number AID-OAA-A-11-00012. NN effort was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P50DA036105 and the Center for Tobacco Products of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P50HL120163. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. SS is supported in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (1K24DA038345-01), NYU CTSA Grant (UL1TR000038) from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the NYU Abu Dhabi Public Health Research Center; OS is supported in part by the NYU Abu Dhabi Public Health Research Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, 227 East 30th St. 7th Floor, New York, NY, 10016, USA

    Omar El-Shahawy & Scott E. Sherman

  2. Public Health Research Center, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Omar El-Shahawy, Carolina Ramôa & Scott E. Sherman

  3. College of Global Public Health, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Omar El-Shahawy, Raymond Niaura, David Abrams & Scott E. Sherman

  4. AHA Tobacco Regulation and Addiction Center, American Heart Association, Dallas, TX, USA

    Omar El-Shahawy

  5. Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

    Omar El-Shahawy

  6. Department of Health Behavior and Policy, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Nicole E. Nicksic

  7. Center for the Study of Tobacco Products, Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Nicole E. Nicksic

  8. Public Health Policy Evaluation Unit, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Mohammed Jawad

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  1. Omar El-Shahawy
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  2. Nicole E. Nicksic
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  4. Mohammed Jawad
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Correspondence to Omar El-Shahawy.

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El-Shahawy, O., Nicksic, N.E., Ramôa, C. et al. Linking Global Youth Tobacco Survey Data to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control: the Case for Egypt. Curr Addict Rep 5, 54–64 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40429-018-0184-0

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