Interim Activity Report

March 2003

The project – related activities started with organizational preparations (including purchase of equipment) and participation in the first seminar in Budapest from March 2nd to 13th.

After the seminar I started to review the experience of other countries. I spent hours just browsing through various web-sites. I found several research papers devoted to tobacco control policy in poor countries. The case of Bangladesh was a real challenge. The case has been investigated by a large number of researchers. I summarized outputs/findings of the aforementioned papers in order to employ as an overall framework of my research.

Meanwhile I visited a number of poor families in the suburbs of Yerevan (more than half of inhabitants of Armenia are concentrated in Yerevan). I decided to investigate the poor ‘family life’ in order to put conclusions obtained on the basis of my research to make it realistic and vital as much as possible.

For the same reason I started to arrange meetings with entities/organizations related to healthcare problems and researching the reasons for widespread illnesses/diseases in Armenia. I also arranged a timetable for meetings with various tobacco control-related organizations.

I discussed the agenda of our collaboration with my local mentor Dr. Armen Darbinian. We decided to meet once a month to discuss project related issues and ideas.

In order not to overlap my activities with my partner while implementing the joint project I had been working in close contact with Mr. Paruyr Amirjanyan. In close collaboration we jointly developed common methodology of the research to increase the efficiency of our work.

April 2003

Along with my colleague - Mr. Amirjanyan I started to discuss the possibilities of active tobacco-control advocacy with non-governmental organizations involved in any tobacco – related and primary health care activities in Armenia.

I established good relations with professors from the Primary Health Care Department of Yerevan State Medical University. Their substantial experience was very helpful for my further research activities.

By the end of April I summarized all my notes taken during my visits to the poor families. In total, I had obtained valuable information from 46 households.

In April the Parliamentary Election Campaign was launched in Armenia. I participated in the debates/panel discussions organized by leading parties and discussed tobacco control issues within the framework of their pre-election programs.

Along with my colleagues from the International Center for Human Development we completed a project proposal targeted at forming an anti-tobacco organizations’ coalition and a relevant networking.

During April 23-26 I participated in OSI conference “Building Coalitions for Tobacco Control” in Bucharest. As a result of my participation in that conference I obtained a lot of useful literature and became familiar with a large number of experts and NGO representatives from different countries dealing with tobacco-control problems. Both economic and health care aspects of the problem were discussed in panel discussions of the conference and a lot of opinions/findings of various researchers were put on the panel.

May 2003

As a follow-up of the OSI conference “Building Coalitions for Tobacco Control” in Bucharest I’ve been involved in various networks, in particular I became a member of www.globalink.org internet portal.

Upon my arrival from Bucharest I started to make arrangements for my participation in 12th World Conference on Tobacco or Health, in the framework of my IPF project. I registered as a delegate and started to arrange useful meetings in Helsinki.

Meanwhile I completed the works on the draft of my policy.hu site (which were started in April). I designed my personal web page with all project-related information and uploaded it on the web (www.policy.hu/lalayan).

By the end of May, I participated in two important meetings devoted to poverty reduction issues in Armenia. I raised the economic aspects of smoking for poor and importance of tobacco-control mechanisms in the overall strategy for poverty reduction in Armenia.

June 2003

I participated in the second IPF seminar in Budapest in the beginning of June. During the seminar I finalized my policy.hu web page uploading there all the necessary information.

I continued meetings with government officials and NGO representatives. 

The issue of my international Mentor was finalized in June and I established a contact with my mentor Mr. Neil Collishaw.

By the end of June, I started to write my research paper.

July 2003

During the first 2 weeks of July I have conducted various observations aimed at evaluating the public awareness in tobacco control. Those observations allowed me to come to several conclusions and formulate relevant policy measures.

In total, I visited 21 state agencies and observed 138 officials directly working with the people. For a couple of days I followed the news programs broadcasted by the local TV channels. I visited all 10 stations of Yerevan underground (Metro).  I had talks with 28 schoolboys and schoolgirls, etc.

The rest of the month I have been involved in paper writing activities.