The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids

Champion institutions: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Lung Association

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation hired DCA to help create a new movement to stop American youth from smoking.  DCA brought key partners to the table – the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Lung Association – who worked together to develop a strategic plan and launch the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids with a $31 million, five-year commitment from its partners and other non-profit organizations and philanthropies.

The Campaign’s leaders were deeply involved in the proposed agreement in the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement between the states and the companies that ended a series of lawsuits to recover the state-borne health costs of smoking. Most important, the Campaign’s efforts at increasing tobacco taxes, passing smoke-free workplace and restaurant laws and increasing funding for smoking prevention and cessation programs have resulted in real reductions in youth smoking which began declining in 1997 for the first time in decades.

Relevant Citations and Links: http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/index.php