The Rockefeller-funded program, "Trading Tobacco for Health" (TTFH), was initiated in 2000 with the goal of developing local capacity for tobacco control research and policy development in four countries in Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Key partners in the initiative include the Institute for Global Tobacco Control (IGTC), the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA), the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC), the Thai Health Foundation, and numerous country partner agencies and researchers in each of the four countries. IGTC was responsible primarily for training and capacity building in research design, data analysis, epidemiology and surveillance methodology. In the first two years of the TTFH, the collaborating institutions gained an in-depth perspective on the status of tobacco control and capacity-development needs in the four Southeast Asian countries that are the focus of TTFH. In response, the IGTC developed a targeted capacity-building program focused on epidemiology and surveillance research training. The capacity-building program was composed of workshop training, small grants, hands-on field research, and distance and individual mentoring, as well as with building strong collaborations and networking within each of the country teams. At the end of project’s second year, IGTC focused on mentoring participants as they carried out research and then moving the resulting evidence into policy translation. In the third and fourth years, TTFH saw a broadening of regional and national tobacco control capacity, a strengthened and growing regional tobacco control network, and developing leaders able to partner with other governmental and non-governmental actors to promote change. IGTC continued in the project during years three and four to provide technical assistance to the TTFH research network through continual training and mentoring, needs assessment, consultative visits, development of survey and research tools, and advancement of the small-grant process. TTFH Workshops | 
