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American Legacy Foundation® Announces New Youth Tobacco Prevention Grantees
5/2/2008
Eleven Programs Granted Awards to Complement truth® Youth Smoking Prevention Campaign Efforts
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The American Legacy Foundation, a national public health foundation dedicated to tobacco use prevention and cessation, has awarded more than $1.2 million in grants to 11 organizations as a part of a new grants initiative: the truth®or Consequences Youth Tobacco Prevention Grants Program. This new program, supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), will support community-based tobacco-use-prevention efforts in 18 states across the country.
The truth® or Consequences grants will engage rural and smaller communities in tobacco use prevention efforts, and supplement the truth® youth smoking prevention media campaign in underserved areas, by developing local tobacco use prevention projects relevant to 12- to 17-year-old youth. These youth-led initiatives are designed to be shared at a national level in order to create the greatest possible impact on the issue of tobacco and smoking. The program also gives each grantee the flexibility to choose and customize different tobacco use prevention strategies and methods, so long as young people remain the decision makers and the project is focused on making a lasting community change.
“Research has shown that truth® is a relevant and proven and proven-effective counter marketing campaign,” said Cheryl Healton Dr. P.H., Legacy’s president and CEO. “Each day, approximately 4,000 young people will try smoking for the first time. We are confident that implementing youth-led, truth® -integrated initiatives will essentially help decrease this trend and advance smoking prevention on a community level.”
The American Legacy Foundation awards will assist the following youth-driven projects for one year:
Healthy Community Coalition (Wilton, Maine) - Healthy Community Coalition (HCC) will launch a youth-driven campaign, entitled the Anti-Tobacco Short Film Project, to reduce tolerance of tobacco among open-to-smoking youth within their low-income, rural community. The HCC will partner with the Maine Public Broadcasting Network and others to support youth in using technology, digital recording and the Web-based video sharing site YouTube®, to communicate anti-tobacco messages to teens. High school juniors and seniors will lead this campaign, which will involve all area middle and high school students.
Hope Street Youth Development (Wichita, Kansas) - The Reality Project is a student-led initiative that will teach students how to use media and technology as an organizing strategy; produce a media piece using technology that will target urban teens with anti-smoking messages; and hold school assemblies at three area high schools where the media piece will be presented and follow-up discussions will be held.
Idaho State University (Pocatello, Idaho) - The Hispanic Teen Cross-Cultural Tobacco Prevention Media Advocacy project brings together existing teen coalitions from two of the most heavily Hispanic counties in Idaho: Canyon County and Twin Falls County. Organizers will develop professional electronic media spots and pay for broadcasting in their respective markets. To support the nonsmoking messages, a grassroots public relations/social marketing campaign will be developed by the teens that will support the spots during the grant period.
Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council (Billings, Montana) - American Indian youth will drive a tobacco use prevention campaign for tribes in Montana and Wyoming. Tribal leaders will engage youth as agents of social change and reveal how the tobacco industry continues to target Native Americans, fund cultural events and exploit Native American images and symbols for commercial purposes. Youth will then develop culturally-tailored media messages for their respective reservations.
Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (Portland, Oregon) – Using community-based participatory research methods, the Native Truth project will engage six teams of youth, each paired with an adult mentor, who will be recruited among the 34 federally recognized tribes of Idaho and Washington. The youth-led teams will design and create short films documenting their communities’ relationship with tobacco, after participating in relevant trainings. The project will emphasize empowerment, counter-marketing practices and life-long leadership.
Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Maine (Augusta, Maine) - The program will allow youth from rural communities in Maine to explore and present the principles of the truth® campaign through the use of theatre, specifically through the process drama method, in two rural Maine communities. Youth planners selected this medium and youth will create and perform their own productions. The products developed will have applications that benefit other youth throughout the state.
Sisters of Color United for Education (Denver, Colorado) - The Murals Project will employ mural-making, print media, public speaking and video production in order to build cultural literacy, pride and leadership with youth. Graphically telling the story of cultural history and community health, young muralists will seek to measurably change their knowledge, attitude and beliefs about smoking as an acceptable social norm. In addition, mural creations will publicly expose the tobacco industry's promotion strategies that target youth.
Tacoma Urban League, Inc. (Tacoma, Washington) - The Health-Youth-Social Injustice project leverages organizational partnerships and relationships with local youth to mobilize an anti-tobacco effort augmenting the media work of the truth® campaign.
Tobacco-Free Kansas Coalition, Inc. (Topeka, Kansas) - This 21-month project will empower Kansas high school students to design training sessions for fellow teens in three rural areas in Kansas. Smaller grants that promote tobacco-free school district campus events and tobacco-free days at local fairs and rodeos will follow. A statewide celebration for youth participants and local and state policymakers will conclude the project.
The Wellness Coalition (Silver City, New Mexico) - The Southwest New Mexico Youth Media Project is a youth-led media campaign designed for print, radio and television. Youth media messages will be developed in cooperation with school-based health centers and performing arts classes in four counties. The Youth Poetry Slam of Southwest New Mexico and the Mixed Company Festival, a multi-county fine arts competition, have agreed to host special competitive categories to select winners to be promoted through this project's media dollars.
American Cancer Society – Great West Division, Inc. (Albuquerque, New Mexico) - The New Mexico Youth Tobacco Control Leadership Project will build upon New Mexico's tobacco control policy success and complement the truth® campaign by developing youth-driven, multi-media and leadership programs in 10-15 culturally diverse rural communities. The goal of the project is to nurture strong, committed youth advocates prepared to lead New Mexico's tobacco control movement to reduce the toll of tobacco use on their peers and future generations.
ABOUT THE CDC GRANT
In 2006, Legacy received a matching grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to deliver the foundation’s successful truth® youth smoking prevention campaign to more young people across the country.1 Through the grant from the CDC, the foundation has increased truth® advertising in 41 television market regions, spanning 18 states. The increased truth® advertising is reaching a broader range of youth in the regions, including young people in communities that typically have less exposure to such campaigns. Across the country, 21.7 percent of high school students smoke, 2 and given that 80 percent of smokers begin before they turn 18 years old, 3 reaching potential teen smokers is particularly important to Legacy. In mid December 2007, the University of Michigan’s annual survey, Monitoring the Future, reported that the historic decline in daily smoking among U.S. high school teens is at a standstill. This alarming public health news underscores the need for this increased “dose” of truth®In addition, recent figures from the Federal Trade Commission show the tobacco industry spends nearly 36 million dollars a day on marketing efforts in the U.S. alone – more than the annual budget for the truth® campaign.
The American Legacy Foundation® is dedicated to building a world where young people reject tobacco and anyone can quit. Located in Washington, D.C., the foundation develops programs that address the health effects of tobacco use, especially among vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by the toll of tobacco, through grants, technical assistance and training, partnerships, youth activism, and counter-marketing and grassroots marketing campaigns. The foundation’s programs include truth®, a national youth smoking prevention campaign that has been cited as contributing to significant declines in youth smoking; EX®, an innovative public health program designed to speak to smokers in their own language and change the way they approach quitting; research initiatives exploring the causes, consequences and approaches to reducing tobacco use; and a nationally-renowned program of outreach to priority populations. The American Legacy Foundation was created as a result of the November 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) reached between attorneys general from 46 states, five U.S. territories and the tobacco industry. Visit http://www.americanlegacy.org/.
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1 CDC funds for grant year 2007 are being matched 2.3 to 1 by the American Legacy Foundation and will continue for two additional grant years (2008, 2009) subject to the availability of funds. The federal share of the money for the first year accounts for 30 percent, or $1.2 million, of the total funds being used for the youth tobacco prevention project. The remaining 70 percent will be the matching,non-federal share provided by the foundation, for approximately $2.6 million.
2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tobacco Use, Access, and Exposure to Tobacco in Media among Middle and High School Students – United States, 2004, April 1, 2005, MMWR 2005;54 (Corrected Text).
3 Mowery PD, Brick PD, Farrelly MC. Legacy First Look Report 3. Pathways to Established smoking: Results from the 1999 National Youth Tobacco Survey. Washington DC: American Legacy Foundation. October 2000.
Contact: Patricia McLaughlin, (202) 454-5560, pmclaughlin@americanlegacy.org