Impact of modular training on tobacco control on the knowledge of health workers in two jurisdictions of northern India

BACKGROUND: National Tobacco Control Programme was launched in India in year 2007-08. It was realized that community health workers can play an important role of agents for positive change to bring down the tobacco morbidity and mortality in the country. Keeping this in view, a health worker guide was developed by the Government of India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (GOI) in collaboration with The Union South-East Asia (The Union) in the year 2010. The guide provides the information needed by the most basic level of health workers to effectively address the problem of tobacco use in the community. A modular training was conducted in two jurisdictions in India (namely, Chandigarh and Hamirpur (Himachal Pradesh)) to assess the usefulness of the guide as training material for community health workers in undertaking tobacco control activities at community and village levels. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 271 participants were trained, which included 133 from Chandigarh and 138 from Hamirpur. The pre and post-training assessment of knowledge of health worker was done. RESULTS: There was marked increase in post-test scores as compared to the pretest scores. The health workers scoring more than 60% increased from 40% in the pretest to over 80% in the post-test. Only three workers had a post-test score of less than 30% against 54 workers in the pretest. CONCLUSION: The understanding on tobacco control had increased significantly after the training in each group. It is strongly recommended that such training should be replicated to all community health workers across all the states in India.