Professor Robert West
Editor-in-Chief
Robert West is Professor of Health Psychology and Director of Tobacco Studies at the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre, University College London, UK. Professor West is also co-director of the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Addiction. He is co-author of the English National Smoking Cessation Guidelines that provided the blueprint for the UK-wide network of stop-smoking services that are now an established part of the UK National Health Service. His research includes evaluations of methods of helping smokers to stop and population surveys of smoking and smoking cessation patterns.
SOCIETY LECTURE 2013:
What can the experience of combating tobacco addiction globally tell us about better ways of addressing other addictions?
Robert West, University College London
Given that, of all the addictions, addiction to tobacco is the one that kills most people worldwide, and that globally the problem is not ameliorating, it may seem perverse to set tobacco control up as an example for those working to combat other addictions. However, there have been significant successes as well as failures and lessons may be learned from both. This lecture will use a framework known as the Behaviour Change Wheel (which links the target behaviour with intervention and policy options) to characterise the policy response to the tobacco threat to date and examine how far this points to intervention approaches for other addictions that may not have received the attention they deserve or areas where resources currently being spent could be more usefully channelled.
Michie et al. Implementation Science 2011, 6:42 (Open Access)
http://www.implementationscience.com/content/6/1/42 (23 April 2011)
