The International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care (ISNCC) is pleased to announce that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in partnership with ISNCC, has been selected as a grant recipient by the Pfizer Foundation for a the following project: 'Adapting a Smoking Cessation Intervention Distance Learning Program to Educate Nurses in China.'

China has the largest population of smokers in the world. In support of the tenets of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, major tobacco control efforts by healthcare professionals are underway but there has been limited attention to enhancing the role that the 1.65 million nurses in China can play in curbing the tobacco-related epidemic. ISNCC will partner with Professor Linda Sarna, University of California, Los Angeles, and Dr. Stella Bialous, President, Tobacco Policy International in this effort to adapt a Web-based educational program to increase nurses' knowledge and skills in conducting tobacco cessation intervention.

A grant from Pfizer Foundation is funding this innovative intervention using information technology which will be tested by 1000 practicing nurses in Beijing. Dr. Xiao Nong Zou, Chief, Office for Tobacco Control, National Office for Cancer Prevention and Cancer Control, Cancer Institute and Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and Professor Sophia Chan, Head, School of Nursing, University of Hong Kong, will serve as key consultants. A special page on the Tobacco Free Nurses website will include nurse-tailored translated materials and a twenty minute video Web-cast based on the 'Rx for Change' curriculum to educate nurses on tobacco cessation interventions. The project will be launched in April, 2011.


Source: ISNCC