Efforts to mitigate the devastation of tobacco-attributable morbidity and
mortality in the European Union (EU) are founded on its newly adopted
Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) along with the first-ever health treaty,
the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The aim
of this Horizon 2020 Project entitled European Regulatory Science on
Tobacco: Policy Implementation to Reduce Lung Disease (EURESTPLUS) is to monitor and evaluate the impact of the implementation of
the TPD across the EU, within the context of WHO FCTC ratification.
To address this aim, EUREST-PLUS consists of four objectives: 1) To
create a cohort study of 6000 adult smokers in six EU MS (Germany,
Greece, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Spain) within a pre-TID vs postTPD implementation study design; 2) To conduct secondary dataset
analyses of the Special Eurobarometer on Tobacco Survey (SETS); 3) To
document changes in e-cigarette product parameters (technical design,
labelling/packaging and chemical composition) pre-TID vs post-TPD;
and 4) To enhance innovative joint research collaborations on chronic
non-communicable diseases. Through this methodological approach,
EUREST-PLUS is designed to generate strong inferences about the
effectiveness of tobacco control policies, as well as to elucidate the
mechanisms and factors by which policy implementation translates to
population impact. Findings from EUREST-PLUS have potential global
implications for the implementation of innovative tobacco control policies
and its impact on the prevention of lung diseases.