Emory awarded $14M grant to snuff out smoking

Emory University will soon be trying to stub out smoking in China.

The Atlanta-based university has been awarded $14 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to reduce tobacco use in the world’s most populous country. The five-year grant will be used to establish the Emory Global Health Institute—China Tobacco Partnership.

“Tobacco is the largest cause of preventable deaths globally and China has the most smokers in the world,” said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Emory Global Health Institute, principal investigator of the grant, and head of the new partnership. “There is a huge opportunity in this project to have an impact on global health.”

China is also the world’s foremost producer of tobacco products, according to Emory officials.

Emory will establish national tobacco control resources centers in China and will collaborate with Chinese public health leaders to tailor anti-smoking approaches to the country’s culture.

The Tobacco Technical Assistance Consortium of Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health will be involved in the project, as will the American Cancer Society, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Institute of Public Health at Georgia State University.

The grant is the second major financial award by the Gates Foundation to a Georgia university in a month.

In December, the University of Georgia announced the largest medical grant in its history— a $18.7 million Gates grant to reduce the effects of the tropical parasitic disease schistosomiasis.

The Gates foundation’s global health program has as its mission to ensure that advances in health care benefit people who need them.