The effect of MPOWER scores on cigarette smoking prevalence and consumption

Abstract

Background The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the MPOWER package to support policy implementation under the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). This study examined the effect of MPOWER policies on smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption in a global context. Methods The MPOWER composite score was constructed by adding up the six MPOWER scores for each country and survey year 2007–2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014, with a possible range between 6 (1 in each of the six score) and 29 (4 in M score and 5 in POWER scores). MPOWER composite scores that measured policy implementation were then linked to cigarette smoking prevalence and consumption data from Euromonitor International. Fractional logit and OLS regressions were employed to examine the effect of the composite MPOWER score on adult smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption, respectively. Results Results indicate that a 1-unit increase in the composite score reduces smoking prevalence by 0.2 percentage points (p<0.05) among adults and 0.3 percentage points (p<0.01) among adult males; and a reduction of 23 sticks of cigarette (1 pack of cigarettes) in cigarette consumption per capita per year. At this rate, if countries had implemented the MPOWER package to the highest levels during 2007–2014, they would have experienced a reduction in smoking prevalence of 7.26 % among adults and 7.87% among adult males and a reduction of 13.80% in cigarette consumption. Conclusions MPOWER policies were effective in reducing cigarette smoking among adults. Parties should continue to implement MPOWER policies that have been recommended by the WHO FCTC to curb tobacco epidemic.

Association between tobacco control policies and current smoking across different occupational groups in the EU between 2009 and 2017

“…We anticipated a lag effect of tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence of 4–5 years; therefore, the TCS scores of 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2013 were assigned to the 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2017 Eurobarometer data, respectively. This was based on two very recent studies that found a relationship between TCS9 and MPOWER22 scores and changes in smoking prevalence in the EU. In these studies, a period of 7 years was chosen to be certain that it was in the range over which policies have been shown to be correlated with prevalence.…”

Global evidence on the effect of point-of-sale display bans on smoking prevalence

“…Since the MPOWER scores were not reported, the scores in the prior years (2008, 2010 and 2012) were replaced using the scores in years 2009, 2011 and 2013, assuming that no policy changes occurred. Following previous literature,22 we constructed a composite score for each country and year by summing up each individual score and used it to account for tobacco control environment.…”

Tobacco control and household tobacco consumption: A tale of two educational groups

“…The variations in noticing antitobacco information in mass media or health warnings in tobacco packaging by respondents' education level, estimated from the 2014 GATS, provide a unique opportunity to analyze the impact of MPOWER implementation on tobacco-use prevalence across socioeconomic groups in Pakistan. Previous studies on MPOWER and tobacco use mainly focus on crosscountry variations in MPOWER implementation and its impact on adult smoking prevalence (Dubray, Schwartz, Chaiton, O'connor, & Cohen, 2015;Gravely et al, 2017;Levy, Yuan, Luo, & Mays, 2018;Ngo, Cheng, Chaloupka, & Shang, 2017). We contribute to the literature by investigating how the heterogeneity in treatment exposure (by education group) may impact outcomes (e.g., tobacco-use prevalence) of MPOWER implementation within a country.…”

“…The lowest attainment level is scored as 1, and the highest attainment level is scored as 4 for M and 5 for the other measures. A composite score generated from aggregating a country's MPOWER measure scores can serve as an indicator of the country's MPOWER implementation status (Dubray et al, 2015;Ngo et al, 2017). The higher the score, the higher is the progress in MPOWER implementation.…”