This week, our Regional Manager for Asia, Ma-Anne Rosales-Sto. Domingo, joined the 2026 ASCEND: Leadership Development for the Future of Tobacco Control Workshop in Bangkok, Thailand, as a panellist for the roundtable discussion "Experiences in Tobacco Control."

ASCEND is a leadership development program designed to equip emerging professionals to drive sustainable change in tobacco control, run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

During the session, Ma-Anne shared insights from our work as the WHO FCTC Knowledge Hub on Legal Challenges, highlighting the critical role of law in advancing public health. She focused on four key functions of law in tobacco control and health policy in her discussion with participants:

Promote: Creating environments where the healthiest choice is the easiest choice. Examples included our technical support to countries developing and strengthening tobacco control legislation, including recent work in Mongolia.

Protect: Supporting governments to safeguard public health decision making and prevent conflicts of interest. This included sharing lessons from our collaboration with UNICEF on conflict-of-interest prevention resources.

Defend: Assisting countries when tobacco control measures are challenged through legal processes, drawing on experiences from landmark cases such as Australia's plain packaging reforms and our ongoing legal support work.

Sustain: Using legal and policy frameworks to support long term investment, multisector collaboration and stronger public health systems, including through initiatives such as the International Legal Training Program (ILTP).

Engaging with the talented group of early career professionals from all over the world was a highlight. Their energy, creativity and commitment to a tobacco free future were inspiring.

Thank you to the ASCEND team and Institute for Global Tobacco Control (IGTC) Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for bringing together such a passionate and motivated cohort of future public health leaders.