Addressing Tobacco Through Organizational Change - China

More information about our general Addressing Tobacco Through Organizational Change program can be found on the ATTOC website.

The Addressing Tobacco Through Organizational Change (ATTOC) in China project is led by Dr. Ziedonis (PI) and Dr. Tao Li (Co-PI at Sichuan University in China), and includes a strong multi-disciplinary research team. Our ATTOC intervention is designed to reduce health risks associated with smoking and improve health of the treatment population. We evaluate organizational changes in nicotine policies; staff-level changes in tobacco and nicotine knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and client-level changes in exposure to and utilization of tobacco and nicotine dependence treatment.

This project includes three components: 
I: Preparation. Phone meetings, emails to prepare site visit, coaching on ATTOC models and leadership team champion selections.
II: Site Visit. Meet key system leaders and stakeholders to get system buy-ins. Meet with tobacco leaders, champions, and leadership team to provide technical assistance, focusing on change plan and tell them what we see. Meet clinicians to provide training. Walk through in the big and small systems, i.e. the West China Hospital and the Mental Health Center.
III: Implementation on patient, staff, environmental goals.

In this project, we adapted our clinical tools and organizational change infrastructure materials (written and web-based) into Chinese and that culture; and pilot tested these items using our ATTOC 6-month intervention. We work with Sichuan University West China Hospital’s Mental Health Center to help West China Hospital become one of the first hospitals in China to go smoke-free.

New interests and partnerships have recently been formed which will expand the ATTOC project to additional locations in China. The UMass ATTOC team is looking forward to collaborating with Drs. Tao Li and Jie Li at Tianjin Mental Health Center/Tianjin General Hospital and Dr. Min Zhao at Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine/Shanghai Mental Health Center to conduct the ATTOC intervention at these two additional sites.

This project is made possible thanks to the UMass Chan Office of Global Health (OGH) for the Global Health Pilot Project Grant, UMass Department of Psychiatry ATTOC China team.