Join us for the eighth episode of GFN Voices 2023!
In this episode, KAC THRSP scholar Aishat Alaran reflects on the #GFN23 conference, her ongoing #tobaccoharmreduction research endeavours, and the difficultes in navigating academic politics outlined in Sarah Cooney's #GFN23 keynote on nicotine research.
You can rewatch Sarah Cooney's keynote 'The politics of scientific publishing' online, for free, here: https://gfn.events/events-timeline/global-forum-on-nicotine-2023/day-3-friday/keynote-speech
Transcription:
Hello, what's your name and where are you from?
My name is Aisha and I'm from Nigeria, but I currently live in the UK because I'm doing my Masters degree.
What do you do? What is your background?
I am a pharmacist and right now I'm doing Masters in Global Health because I'm interested
in health and the population systemically.
Is this your first time at GFN Conference?
Yeah, this will be the first time I'll be attending in person, but I've attended online
like a couple of times now.
And what do you think about this year's GFN Conference?
I think of GFN as a conference and what KAC is doing to help
people, who are vicious quitting smoking, it's a very beautiful thing.
And I think having like this sort of conference where researchers, advocates
and consumers can come together and share evidence and discuss, what's
next, what we've been doing, where we're going next.
I think it's something that's like very profound and very important, especially in public health now.
You participated in THR's scholarship programme.
Can you tell us about the project you are working on?
Well, I am an Enhanced Scholar now.
I got the Enhanced Scholarship last year, but I couldn't like embark on it because I was going to school.
My basic scholarship was about assessing smoking cessation product
and on pharmacists in Nigeria, what they know about tobacco harm reduction.
So, that was a very beautiful research project, actually, I learned a lot through that project.
So, for my Enhanced Scholarship, I'll be doing a qualitative research on
smokers in Nigeria and seeing, who is trying to quit, who is trying
not to quit and what they know about tobacco harm reduction products, especially e-cigarettes.
And yeah, so that's what my Enhanced Scholarship project is about.
And which topic on the conference seems to be most interesting for you?
I think the session on journals and how journals are meant to be,
a place where research comes together, where we share evidence, build policy.
And I think that's actually the most interesting thing because there's a lot of
controversies these days about tobacco control and tobacco harm reduction.
what journals, tobacco harm reduction papers can publish.
And so I just like having interesting conversation.
So we may not have solutions right now,
but having conversations around issues and challenges we face
it's a very good step forward so I can see what we do next.
That's the most interesting part.
Right. Thank you so much.
Yeah. Thank you.