The overall goals of the Pennsylvania State University Western and Southern African Tobacco Research (PSU-WSATR) Program are to: 1) conduct research on tobacco control among youth; 2) establish two Centers of Excellence (COEs) in Dakar, Senegal and Cape Town, South Africa focusing on tobacco control research; 3) develop regional networks of researchers and graduate students; 4) provide training and internships; and 5) promote links and academic exchanges between the COEs to conduct innovative and relevant studies examining the effects of tobacco use by youth in Senegal and South Africa. The investigators aim to conduct research studies focusing on prevalence and risk factors; psychopathology and tobacco use among youth; community influence and protective factors in tobacco use among high school students; qualitative studies of the tobacco use among adolescent girls; smoking cessation among young adults; political economy of tobacco use; pilot intervention studies; and a study of the ethnographic and traditional cultural uses of tobacco among Western and Southern African populations. The PSU-WSATR will establish over the course of five years two COEs consisting of a core of 10-15 researchers, graduate students, and administrative personnel at the University of Chiekh Diop in Dakar, Senegal and the University of Cape Town, South Africa specializing in tobacco research and control studies focusing on youth populations. A regional network consisting of researchers and graduate students will be developed in at least two neighboring countries (i.e., Gambia and Bukino Faso) in Western Africa and (i.e., Namibia and Tanzania) in Southern Africa who will collaborate with the COEs as researchers and in capacity building initiatives intended to build and strengthen training and empirical research focusing on youth populations.
