Robyn Richmond has been an educator for over 40 years and her longstanding service to education has led to transformations in public health 

1.    Service to medical education 

Since the early 1980s Robyn Richmond has been actively involved in curriculum development in medical schools on teaching medical students about tobacco control and smoking cessation techniques and on alcohol misuse and interventions to moderate alcohol consumption, as well as training doctors about how to assist smoking patients to quit tobacco use and to control alcohol misuse.
Robyn Richmond’s pioneering research work on the importance of general practitioners in reducing smoking, and their lack of knowledge and training when she commenced work in this area, triggered a commitment to introduce smoking cessation and tobacco education and alcohol misuse into medical schools’ curricula. She surmised that providing teaching about tobacco and alcohol in medical schools would ensure that future doctors are adequately trained to encourage their patients to quit tobacco use and control over consumption of alcohol.

Undergraduate medical school curriculum at UNSW 
Teaching on Preventive strategies
When Robyn Richmond commenced teaching at UNSW in the 1980s, there was no teaching at all on prevention initiatives in the undergraduate medical program. In response to this, she initiated and implemented the teaching of preventive strategies for medical students. She commenced by offering medical students optional lunchtime seminars about prevention on a range of public health topics.  These became so popular that a teaching stream on prevention was developed and introduced by Robyn into the medical curriculum.   Robyn Richmond can be credited with developing teaching curricula on preventive activities and incorporating it into the undergraduate medical program at UNSW. She taught preventive strategies to Years 1 and 2 medical students in the Health Maintenance course at UNSW from the early 1980s until 2016. 
During this time as part of her Preventive Strategies teaching, she organised an innovative Health Fest Community Day in which she invited over 30 community organisations to UNSW to display stand and present to the medical students about their community preventive activities, some of which included components and resources from Robyn Richmond’s research.  Some of the participating community organisations include: the National Heart Foundation, Cancer Council, Australian Red Cross, Australian Kidney Foundation, Australian Breastfeeding Association, Asthma Foundation, Diabetes Australia, Hepatitis C Council, Mental Health Association Australia, NSW Mental Health and Drug & Alcohol Office and the Fred Hollows Association. Some of these organisations used Robyn Richmond's health resources in their health promotion activities (e.g. Australian Navy). 

Teaching on the role of the doctor in smoking and alcohol
For more than 20 years, Robyn Richmond has developed and taught medical students on the role of the doctor in smoking cessation and harmful alcohol consumption. She developed a session for medical students on Motivational Interviewing and the role of the doctor in reducing patients’ risky alcohol use which has sustained for 20 years.  Robyn invites alcohol and drug clinicians and researchers working in hospitals and drug and alcohol treatment clinics to participate in the teaching of this program. In this way, they provide rich and interesting examples from their own clinical work and this teaching is popular with medical students.

Introducing teaching on public health into clinical disciplines
Introducing public health into clinical disciplines is an innovation in teaching and learning and is a example of significant contribution to medical education.  

Designing and teaching in the Health Maintenance course
Robyn Richmond was a member of the Learning Activity Design and Implementation group focussing on designing the Health Maintenance course delivered annually to 570 medical students in years 1 and 2 of the UNSW undergraduate medical course. She was responsible for the introduction of teaching on alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs, and nutrition in the undergraduate medical program. Over 20 years she has made a major contribution to the development of innovative learning and teaching activities in public health topics.  

Medical school curricula in medical schools globally
“Most of the world’s more than one billion smokers – about a quarter of all adults – are addicted.  Many want to quit, but few get the help they need. Services to treat tobacco dependence are fully available in only nine countries, with 5% of the world’s population. Countries must establish programs providing low-cost, effective interventions for tobacco users who want to escape their addiction“.
Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization, 2008.

For more than 25 years, Robyn Richmond has worked to address the negative effects of tobacco use across the globe through introduction of tobacco curricula in medical schools. 
She believes that training future medical practitioners is a powerful tool leading to a reduction of tobacco use and a concomitant improvement in the health of populations. Robyn Richmond’s teaching is based on her research and has been introduced into curricula in medical schools globally.  This has involved carrying out a range of public health activities including development and evaluation of uptake of tobacco curricula, identifying and training key people to champion teaching about tobacco, and dissemination of tobacco curricula to medical schools worldwide. She developed a model of implementation of health promotion for different countries and published a paper on her model in Respirology based on her experience working in medical schools in China.  
One focus of Robyn Richmond’s global public health work has been to collaborate in joint partnerships to disseminate tobacco curricula and resource materials in low-middle income countries working in collaboration with Professor Harry Lando (Chicago, US) and other members of the Global Network on Health, a group within the Society for Research into Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT). For example:
Germany
As part of Robyn Richmond’s program of work for the Tobacco Prevention Section, IUATLD, she was invited to run a workshop on educating medical students at the 27th Global Conference on Lung Health held in Mainz, Germany in 1994. The workshop participants were predominantly academics and respiratory physicians from medical schools in Europe and they discussed successes and barriers encountered when implementing tobacco curricula in medical schools.  
Turkey
Robyn Richmond was invited by the University of Masmara, Turkey and the Turkish Thoracic Society to conduct two workshops in Istanbul in 1996. They translated both the tobacco curriculum in the handbook for teachers and the resources for students into Turkish, and the Turkish Thoracic Society sponsored the publication of the Turkish version of the handbook. Tobacco curriculum training workshops for Turkish medical school academics were attended by academics from most of the 37 medical schools across Turkey.  
China
In 1998 Robyn Richmond received a short-term consultancy from the World Health Organization to develop and trial teaching resources for teachers and students in medical schools in China. Robyn Richmond developed and disseminated the tobacco training program in a series of workshops for academics working in medical schools in the north of China (Beijing), and in the south of China (Chan Chung).  There were 85 academic doctors from Chinese medical schools who participated in the training workshops and more than 100 medical students attended lectures. Four months after the training workshops, half of the Chinese medical schools said they had introduced Robyn Richmond’s tobacco control curriculum into their medical schools.  An important impact of the training program in China was that Shanghai Medical University incorporated the Smokescreen education program into  the Year V medical program textbook called Jiankang Jiaoyuxue.

In 2007 Robyn Richmond was asked by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing to run a smoking cessation training course for Chinese medical academic physicians visiting Australia. She developed and ran a 10-day Smokescreen Education Program training course. The participants returned to China to train medical school clinicians and academics.
Thailand
Robyn Richmond was invited by the IUATLD to conduct a training workshop at the 29th World Conference of the IUATLD and Global Congress on Lung Health in Thailand in 1998. Medical school academics from all over the world attended this workshop which resulted in her medical school curriculum being translated and implemented in medical schools across the globe. 
France and Cambodia
A respiratory physician from the Pitie Salpetriere Hospital in Paris who attended the IUATLD training in Thailand presented the Smokescreen Education program to the French Ministry of Health and received support and funding to translate and implement the program across France and French speaking medical schools in Cambodia.
Iran
Robyn Richmond worked with an Iranian physician to translate the tobacco curricula and the accompanying resources into Farsi for Iranian medical schools in. The teaching program was implemented into the Iranian medical course and evaluation showed an almost fourfold from increase in knowledge about tobacco among Iranian medical students
Laos
The Smokescreen Education program was translated and academics in medical and nursing schools implemented the program into Lao medical schools. 2,242 medical and nursing students were taught about tobacco in 9 out of 11 medical and nursing schools throughout Laos. 
Other translations
Robyn Richmond has worked with other academics in countries around the world advising on translations and dissemination of her tobacco curricula resources such as:
•    Academics from Kuwait University introduced Robyn Richmond’s tobacco curriculum into medical schools across the Arab Gulf States
•    Italy
•    Romania
•    Japan 
•    Spain.
The process of dissemination into medical schools included training a key person either in a workshop  (e.g., for French and Romanian respiratory physicians), or by visiting their country and conducting the training course for academics in local medical schools (e.g., in Turkey, Thailand, China and Germany), or training the medical school academics in Australia (e.g., from Japan, Laos and Malaysia). The tobacco curriculum has been introduced into many medical schools across the globe. The stages of this public health initiative consist of a needs assessment through to resource development, training, dissemination, evaluation and revision. 
This service to medical education shows sustained global impact of Robyn Richmond’s tobacco control work in medical schools. 
China, Indonesia, India and Bangladesh
In December 2011, Deans and Professors from medical and nursing schools from Bangladesh, China, India and Indonesia were invited to a 3-day workshop in Singapore where they were trained in smoking cessation medical curricula by Professor Robyn Richmond, Professor Harry Lando (USA) and colleagues from the International Union who organised this workshop. 

Postgraduate education 
Robyn Richmond has developed six courses in the Master of Public Health (MPH) program at UNSW including: Research Skills in Public Health, Applied Epidemiology, International Tobacco Control, Centenarian Health and Lifestyles, Vulnerable People in Kenya and Tobacco, Alcohol and Illicit Drugs. She regularly supervises students for small and medium sized research projects and develops their capacity as independent researchers.  
Tobacco, Alcohol and Illicit Drugs course
In 2010 Robyn Richmond expanded her Tobacco Control course from a 3 credit unit course to a 6 credit unit course called: Tobacco, Alcohol and Illicit Drugs. She designed, coordinates and teaches this course in the Master of Public Health (MPH) program and includes numerous innovative teaching methods which are highly rated by the students.  Course materials are evidence based and linked to the latest research.  This course is popular among doctors, nurses and psychologists and both local and international students participate. Comments from students include: 
•    Her teaching sessions are so interactive that I have not seen such a hardworking professor like her, in all the seminars, her participation made every seminar even more informative. And especially when she asks us to apply it to our home country.
•    All her course is mind blowing.
•    She was very helpful in regards to providing material and resources and information.
•    She has a very well structured way of teaching.
•    She encourages critical thinking as well as independent learning with many learning activities.
•    She has complete trust in her students and provided a lot of helpful material. 
•    Her lectures are very exciting.
•    She has very sound knowledge into the course and the field in general, engaged students to think and encouraged participation.
Research Skills in Public Health course
Previously, she developed and ran a core MPH course, Research Skills in Public Health. As part of this course, students were attached to various public health research projects in the community which afforded them practical and hands on experience of public health research and encouraged them to pursue research in public health areas. This was a seminal course which has developed into other courses in the MPH program.
Health Needs of Vulnerable People Living in an Internally Displaced Persons’ Camps in Kenya
In 2012 and 2013, Robyn Richmond developed a unique offering within the UNSW Public Health masters program which offered the opportunity for overseas data collection. Students spent 1-2 weeks in Kenya where they collected data on the health needs of people living in Internally Displaced Persons’ Camps. This innovative project offered students a chance to observe and participate in a major public health activity in a resource poor country. It provided a rich learning experience where students gained experience in a range of research methods including the complexities of conducting research in a resource poor setting. 
Supervision of postgraduate coursework research students
Emeritus Professor Robyn Richmond regularly supervises postgraduate coursework students in small and medium sized research projects. She has supervised many students as part of her various research projects in general practice, smoking among prisoners and ex-prisoners, smoking among those with a mental illness, centenarians, and research in Kenya and Uganda.  This type of supervision is a capacity building exercise and enables students to pursue further higher research degrees. 

2.    Service to education of health professionals

Training health professionals in smoking cessation in Australia: doctors, nurses and pharmacists
Robyn Richmond’s Smokescreen smoking cessation program translation was developed as a part of her research but was translated into use in general practice as a service to health professionals and to public health. The program continued to be refined and developed as a result of evaluations in practice among general practitioners. 
Training and evaluation of its effectiveness among general practitioners
Robyn Richmond and her colleagues, Professor Nicholas Zwar and Associate Professor Colin Mendelsohn trained around 11,000 GPs across Australia in the Smokescreen smoking cessation intervention. Training in workshops commenced nationally in 1986 and was carried out predominantly on a voluntary basis during evenings or on weekends.
Robyn Richmond evaluated utilisation of the smoking treatment program among 198 GPs and found that 88% of GPs who had been trained in her Smokescreen smoking cessation program were using it six months following their training workshop. This percent extrapolates to 9,680 of the 11,000 GPs trained in the Smokescreen cessation treatment program who continued to use the intervention program with their smoking patients. This would have been almost half of the 20,000 GPs working in Australia in 1991 at the time the study was conducted (GP Workforce Statistics: 1984-85 to 2013-14), who were using her smoking cessation treatment program at least 6 months after training. 
Among the general population, 80% of people visit their GP at least once a year, and smokers usually visit their GP more than once.  In 1990 over 3.5 million Australians were smokers, and 2.8 million of these smokers would have visited their GP at least once during the year. Since almost half of all GPs (9,680) would have been using the Smokescreen smoking cessation program with their patients on a regular basis, it can be surmised that around 1.4 million smokers would have been assisted to quit smoking as a result of visiting a GP trained in Robyn Richmond’s Smokescreen team. This reveals the significant public health impact of her work among GPs to reduce smoking among patients. Further, this also demonstrated that GPs can play an important role in assisting smokers to quit and resulted in a systemic shift in the practice of general practitioners.
Training nurses 
The training program Robyn Richmond developed for GPs to use with smoking patients was translated for other health professionals such as practice nurses.  Over the past 15 years and ongoing, she has trained nurses in evidence based smoking cessation interventions. Working with co-investigator Professor Nicholas Zwar, now Executive Dean, Health Sciences & Medicine, Bond University, their latest venture is to train practice nurses working in general practice to deliver brief smoking advice.
Training pharmacists 
Based on the national training program implemented among general practitioners, a program was launched in May 2000 as a quitting event for World No Tobacco Day.  This was the Smokescreen for Pharmacy Program, a national program in which resources were developed for use by pharmacists with smokers.  The program was launched in a national broadcast with Robyn Richmond, Nick Zwar and two pharmacists as the expert panel.  In this initiative, more than 2500 pharmacists were trained around Australia.  

Training medical practitioners in smoking cessation globally
Robyn Richmond has promoted global health by training doctors from other countries in smoking cessation treatments thus enabling them to adapt and implement the Smokescreen training program among doctors in their own countries.  This service to the international community has been recognised by numerous awards. 
New Zealand
Robyn Richmond was invited by Christchurch School of Medicine to implement her Smokescreen training program in various hospital services and into general practices in New Zealand and 35% of all GPs in New Zealand were trained in the Smokescreen program. During the initial six months there were 25 training workshops in the use of the smoking cessation method with around 800 New Zealand health professionals attending including general practitioners, practice nurses, respiratory physicians and respiratory nurse educators working in hospitals.  
The Smokescreen initiative was regarded so highly that the Canterbury Health and Pegasus Medical Group in New Zealand created a full-time Smokescreen trainer who maintained ongoing liaison with general practitioners and practice nurses, as well as in the hospital system where she trained doctors and nurses to use the Smokescreen intervention. Smokescreen resource kits were available on the respiratory, cardiac, general medicine, diabetes and peripheral vascular wards and patients were advised to quit. 
The New Zealand model of implementation of Smokescreen was different to that in Australia but was also very effective, with integration of the smoking cessation service across different medical specialties. According to physicians “it has changed hospital practice” in Canterbury and family practice in the south island of New Zealand. The Smokescreen project was recognised as a “major force behind better integration between hospital and general practice services” in the Canterbury area. In the north island, a position was created by the Independent Practitioners Association based in Auckland for teaching Smokescreen to GPs. Nurses from the coronary care unit attended Smokescreen training workshops and implemented the program. 
The New Zealand doctors participating in the Smokescreen program in New Zealand said that the program was “enthusiastically received in primary care” and it had a positive effect on reducing smoking rates among New Zealanders. Independent New Zealand follow-ups found that an acculturatised version of the Smokescreen program was widely used and helped one third of enrolled patients to remain non-smokers six months after treatment to reduce tobacco use. The results in New Zealand indicated the important role of the general practitioner in smoking cessation.  
China
Robyn Richmond was invited by the (then) Scientific Director of The Union (IUATLD), in 1995 to join a 10-day international delegation to work in China.  The Department of Health in Beijing invited doctors to the training workshops and attended and participated in the workshops. Chinese doctors were introduced to the range of anti-smoking techniques available.  Various Smokescreen resources were translated into Mandarin, such as the book: Become a Non-Smoker, and the pamphlets for patients: Women and smoking: The choice is yours, Smokers, you have a right to know, Smoking: the choice is yours, Taking action to stop smoking and Self-help for smokers.
Additionally, as part of her WHO consultancy work in China in 1998, Robyn Richmond conducted workshops in smoking cessation methods for medical practitioners working in Beijing.
In 2007, Robyn Richmond was asked by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing to run a training course in smoking cessation for doctors visiting Australia from various parts of China. She developed and ran a 10-day training course at UNSW. The participants were trained in the Smokescreen Education Program which they took back with them to train medical school clinicians and academics.
Hong Kong
The Smokescreen program was implemented in a clinic in Hong Kong, at a time when smoking cessation programs were rare. This first evaluation of the Smokescreen smoking cessation program in Asia showed that the service was acceptable to Chinese smokers. The Chinese quit rate was comparable to Western clinics. The study concluded that a part-time smoking cessation clinic is a promising model for piloting smoking cessation services in the East. 
Turkey
When Robyn was Chair of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease Tobacco Prevention Section, she worked with colleagues to run workshops in Masmara University Turkey on the Smokescreen program. They translated the handbook and resources into Turkish. Over 100 Turkish doctors were trained in the Smokescreen Program for GPs.  The Turkish Thoracic Society sponsored the publication of the Turkish version of the handbook.  
France
Following the training workshop Robyn Richmond ran for respiratory physicians at an IUALTD conference, the Director of the Department of Pulmonology at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris, selected the Smokescreen program as the basis of his Nicomède program for dissemination among family doctors in France.  The Smokescreen program was translated and adapted and training resources were produced. The Smokescreen GP program was combined with the Smokescreen Education program that Robyn Richmond had developed for medical students. The combined program was presented to the French Ministry of Health and received their support and funding.  The French Ministry of Health launched the GP training program on 31 May 1999, World No Tobacco Day, which focused on smoking cessation.  
During 1999-2000, one physician educator from each of the 125 administrative areas in France was educated and then they, in turn, trained 25 GPs in their areas.  Over the ensuing years, more than 10,000 physicians and nurses received education in the Nicomède Program.  The program was also introduced among 3000 French cardiologists, nurses in hospitals and physicians in the workplace, as well as into pregnancy units and 250 alcohol centres across France.  
The Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital evaluation to Professor Richmond was positive: “The French evolution of the Smokescreen program had in hand a lot of chance to be a success”.  During the first year, the Smokescreen Program was implemented in general practice, in alcohol centres, among occupational physicians, healthcare workers in hospitals, obstetric clinics and was used to educated medical students and nurses and it became “very popular”.   
Iran
An Iranian physician who met Robyn Richmond when she was chair of the Tobacco Prevention Section of the IUATLD attended her training workshop in the Smokescreen program.  He incorporated the training program into the continuing medical education programs for Iranian physicians. 
Malaysia
A Malaysian primary care physician translated the Smokescreen GP program materials into Malaysian when studying his Master of Public Health at the University of New South Wales under Robyn Richmond’s supervision. He returned to Malaysia with the program and actively trained GPs in the Malaysian Smokescreen program. 
Japan
A Japanese endocrinologist was trained in the Smokescreen GP program when she came to Sydney for a sabbatical with Robyn Richmond, and she translated the program and introduced it into Nara, Japan.