Development of the CEO Statement

The Electronic Cigarettes Working Committee (the Committee) was established from 5 June 2020 to 4 September 2022 and reported to the Council of NHMRC.

NHMRC undertook a scoping activity to help the Committee to determine what should/should not be included in the review and update of the CEO Statement, including priority topics and formation of research questions.

NHMRC commissioned several evidence reviews on the topics of e-cigarette use and smoking behaviour (uptake and cessation), the effects of e-cigarette advertising, promotion and sponsorship, and e-cigarette use and health outcomes. NHMRC undertook a scoping review on the toxicology of e-cigarettes.

NHMRC procured methodological reviewers to independently examine the quality of the commissioned evidence reviews and the toxicology scoping review to ensure that the reviews followed the systematic and rigorous approach as documented in the review protocols.

GRADE was used to assess the certainty (quality) of the evidence. The WHO-INTEGRATE evidence-to-decision framework was used to develop the updated CEO Statement. The Santesso et al (2020) Informative statements to communicate the findings of systematic reviews of interventions was used to inform the terminology of the evidence statements.

The draft CEO Statement was circulated to federal, state and territory Chief Health Officers/Chief Medical Officers for targeted consultation over a two-week period in March 2022.

Independent expert review of the CEO Statement took place between 14 April and 13 May 2022. The expert reviewers provided their comments on the draft CEO Statement to ensure that the evidence on e-cigarettes had been appropriately interpreted and synthesised in the CEO Statement.

NHMRC Council considered the CEO Statement in June 2022. The CEO Statement was launched on 23 June 2022.