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Research

Hriday > What We Do > Research

HRIDAY, in collaboration with international and national academic institutes and partners carries out multi-disciplinary evidence-generating research to address important health and development issues, and to inform policy and programmatic action, with a particular focus on prevention and control of NCDs.

HRIDAY has carried out behavioural research, policy and legal research, social sciences research along with cluster randomized trials for evaluating multi-component interventions involving behaviour change strategies.

One of the research studies undertaken at HRIDAY is MYTRI (Mobilising Youth for Tobacco Related Initiatives in India) which was designed to test the effectiveness of a tobacco prevention programme among youth in India. The evidence from Project HRIDAY-CATCH (Child and Adolescents Trial for Cardiovascular Health) and Project MYTRI was used to inform the development of the National Tobacco Control Programme (NTCP) in India. HRIDAY-CATCH and MYTRI publications have provided evidence to advocate for the need to implement tobacco prevention and control models at the school level, concentrating on behaviour change and lifestyle modification through school programs. MYTRI demonstrated the effectiveness of school based interventions in reducing tobacco use among Indian youth by reducing current tobacco use, by reducing their future intentions to use tobacco and by enhancing their health advocacy skills.

Project ACTIVITY (Advancing Cessation of Tobacco in Vulnerable Indian Tobacco Consuming Youth) was undertaken to study the efficacy of a comprehensive, community-based tobacco control intervention among disadvantaged youth (10-19 years) living in low income communities of Delhi. The project was successful in significantly increasing young people’s knowledge about the harmful effects of tobacco use and their knowledge about tobacco control policies.

‘Assessment of Causality between Exposure to Tobacco Use in Bollywood Movies and Tobacco Use among Indian Adolescents’ to assess causal associations between tobacco use in Bollywood with initiation and/or progression of tobacco use among school going adolescents in Delhi, India.

In 2017, HRIDAY undertook a study entitled ‘Preventing smoking uptake among adolescents-A primary prevention initiative for chronic lung disease in India’ to identify and understand environmental factors that increase the risk of adolescent’s exposure to smoke tobacco and to identify obstacles to more extensive implementation of anti-smoking policies. Similarly, study on ‘Building capacity for applied research to reduce tobacco-related harm in low and middle-income countries’ is being undertaken at HRIDAY. The study aims to study the impact of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on different nuances of tobacco at national and state levels in India and understand barriers and enablers in protecting public health policy from tobacco industry interference (TII).

You can read more about our research work here.