CVS Health commits $50 million to deliver nation's first tobacco-free generation

WOONSOCKET, R.I. - CVS Health on Thursday announced the launch of "Be The First," a five-year $50 million initiative to help deliver the nation's first tobacco-free generation. 

 

"We are at a critical moment in our nation's efforts to end the epidemic of tobacco use that continues to kill more people than any other preventable cause of death, and threatens the health and well-being of our next generation," stated Troyen Brennan, chief medical officer for CVS Health. "Ensuring our youth stay tobacco-free requires increased education and awareness of healthy behaviors. We're partnering with experts across the public health community who have established best practices to help prevent tobacco use," he said. "And, by establishing more public-private partnerships to implement these strategies more aggressively, we can help increase the number of people leading tobacco-free lives and move us one step closer to delivering the first tobacco-free generation."

 

To help achieve these goals, CVS Health and the CVS Health Foundation have enlisted the help of the nation's leading anti-tobacco and youth organizations to support programs that each address a unique part of the tobacco epidemic. 

 

Many of these partnerships will be launching in the coming weeks. 

 

These include new and expanded tobacco education programming with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and Scholastic, as well as advocacy and tobacco-control initiatives with organizations such as the American Cancer Society and the National Urban League to accelerate declines in rates of smoking and other tobacco use among teens and young adults.

 

Be The First is directed at youth and young adults who use tobacco or who are at risk of becoming regular tobacco users, as well as the country's 3 million elementary school children who, without early tobacco education, may become future tobacco users. It is also focused on continuing to support community-based cessation programs for adult smokers, who expose children to tobacco use in the home and other public venues that permit smoking.

 

To help guide the initiative, CVS Health is convening a national advisory group made up of a diverse group of thought leaders who will advise on trends, initiatives and strategies that help advance the company's efforts to make the next generation tobacco-free. 

 

Members of the advisory group include: 

 

 

"Both the public health community and private sectors must work together if we are to advance a national strategy to end the tobacco epidemic, especially among our children," Myers noted. "We applaud CVS Health for continuing to demonstrate its leadership and commitment to helping people lead tobacco-free lives with this significant investment in the health and well-being of the next generation of Americans."

 

CVS Health has set actionable and measurable goals over the next five years for its Be The First initiative, including contributing to a 3% decline in the national youth smoking rate, a 10% decline in the number of new youth smokers and doubling the number of tobacco-free college and university campuses.

 

Additionally, Be The First will support acampaign to encourage tobacco-free social media. The #BeTheFirst social campaign will include a variety of shareable videos, graphics and digital tools that enable youth to express their commitment to "be the first" generation to lead tobacco-free lives and counter social media messaging and imagery that promotes youth tobacco use. Research shows that exposure to social media that depicts tobacco use predicts future smoking tendency, over and above the influence of TV and movie depictions of smoking. By helping to make the virtual world of social media tobacco-free, Be The First is helping to provide young people with the motivation to adopt and advocate for the same healthy behaviors in the physical world where it truly matters.