Building Capacity for Advocacy in the Revision of Shanghai Regulations on Smoking Control in Public Places

Background:  The Shanghai Regulations on Smoking Control in Public Places took effect in 2010. That law had played a significant role in Shanghai tobacco control progress, especially in the outcome of smoke free EXPO 2010 Shanghai. However, this regulation still existed some deficiencies. For example, some restaurants, hotels, traffic centers were allowed to set up smoking area or smoking rooms, and there was no limitation in work places. From 2015, Shanghai planned to revise the law and there came to a debate on whether the new law should accept completely smoke-free environment.

Program background:  This project planned to help to advocate a smoke free policy in Shanghai and to achieve 100% smoke-free indoor public places. That will provide better support for Shanghai Citizens’ health and make Shanghai tobacco control regulation in line with requirements of the “WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)”.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  We collected local evidence to advocate the total smoke free policy in the revision. Meanwhile, based on tobacco control regulation revision process, our team actively interacted with media and government to take the results heard by the citizens and officials. Firstly, based on the discussion of the law revision progress, our team applied different scientific research to collect local data from Shanghai to provide strong support for policy advocacy. Secondly, we set up a Tobacco Control Research Center in Health Communication Institute of Fudan University. The center has gathered many experts in various disciplines, such as public health, clinical medicine, law, politics, and economics, and serves as a platform for multi-disciplinary cooperation. It has become a expert resources aggregation platform for tobacco control. Thirdly, the project team kept track of the law revision processing and developed a series of tobacco control activities. Within the last two years, our team have convened more than ten tobacco control activities. Fourthly, we also held several media seminars and worked very close with media. Our research results and health concept broadly passed to the citizens, and had good communication with government and media. At last, we have written several decision-making proposals and submitted to the official department. Our team members attended several important official expert consultation meeting, and elaborated on the views and achievements.

Conclusions:  The result of the study became media hotspots and powerful tool for smoke-free advocacy. The detailed items we suggested such as “do not keep smoking rooms and zones in indoor places” were accepted by the new law.

Implications for research and/or practice:  As a research institution, the project has established a channel linking scientific research to policy advocacy, and on this basis, the capacity of research, communication and advocacy have been improved.