Objectives

1. Optimize amethods for studying tobacco use and local smoking practices using key informant interviews and focus groups to guide the development of epidemiological, clinical laboratory, and treatment strategies. In the next stage, epidemiological studies will detail the patterns and determinants of tobacco use and cessation in Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, focusing on cigarette and narghile or water pipe use.
2. Describe, in a clinical laboratory established in Aleppo, the subjective, physiological, and behavioral effects of smoking systems that are popular in, and in some cases unique to, the ME, such as narghile. This laboratory will be established in Aleppo and will be modeled after a laboratory at Virginia Commonwealth University, VCU, currently directed by one of the principle collaborators on this project, Dr. Eissenberg.
3. Test a primary care smoking cessation intervention tailored to the Syrian environment based on data from epidemiological and clinical laboratory research. This intervention will be developed during the first half of the project and will be implemented and tested in the second half.
4. Train Syrian tobacco researchers so that the expertise and resources necessary for sustaining and expanding the SCTS will be in place locally at the project's end. The training component includes a fellowship program for study in the United States, sponsorship of an annual regional tobacco control conference, and expert consultation and resource sharing via the Internet for other researchers and institutions working in tobacco control research in the ME.