Creating Partnerships with Passion: Lessons from Cdc's Tips from Former Smokers Campaign

Background:  Smoking damages nearly ever organ of the body, contributing to several disease conditions including preterm birth, macular degeneration, COPD, heart disease, and cancer. More than fifty years after the release of the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health, cigarette use remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States.  Over 480,000 Americans die annually from smoking and more than 16 million Americans are living with one or more smoking-related diseases.

Program background:  Since 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) national tobacco education campaign, Tips From Former Smokers (Tips), has featured former smokers who are living with serious long-term health problems from smoking and secondhand smoke exposure. Since the campaign was launched, CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health (OSH) has formed strong partnerships with over 30 professional organizations and businesses passionate about helping smokers quit. These partnerships have extended the reach of the campaign messages to millions of health care and faith-based professionals, including midwives, dental professionals, pharmacists, vision care professionals, family doctors, faith leaders, mental health care providers, HIV specialists, and respiratory therapists, with the goal of enhancing their ability to help smokers quit.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  OSH continuously monitors partner-focused web page metrics, collecting social media metrics and analyzing website traffic and materials downloads. Web page traffic averages over 100 visits daily (tripling from last year, on average) and hundreds of material downloads weekly, surging during times of heavy partner promotion. Partners have issued several directors’/CEO’s letters of support for Tips and published ads and editorials in professional journals and magazines, including Healthy Mom & Baby, HIV Specialist, Quickening, and PA Professional, which reach a combined audience of approximately 3.1 million annually. Partners have sponsored quit challenges, conducted social media promotion, held webinars, placed Tips content on their websites, and shared free resources with their constituents. Walmart’s director of health and wellness promoted the Tips vision care professional web page to all Walmart optometrists, who represent 1in 10 optometrists in the U.S. Other business partnerships have helped expand the reach of Tips messages as well. Good Neighbor Pharmacy, which has 3,100 pharmacies nationally, currently features Tipscampaign web content on a smoking cessation microsite to reach their national audience of 11.8 million customers. Additionally, CVS Health has run public service announcements from the campaign on their in-store radio network in 7,600 stores since 2014, generating an earned media value of $1.5 million to date. 

Conclusions:  Tips’robust partnership efforts illustrate the wide range of professional partner organizations that can be engaged to help reach millions of people with messages and tools to help smokers quit. They also show how private sector businesses can help provide millions of people with scientifically sound public health information and resources through their own channels.

Implications for research and/or practice:  Partner organizations who are not traditionally linked to smoking cessation can become avidly involved in helping smokers quit. Approaching and involving a broad range of partners may enhance the reach and increase the volume of important public health messages that ultimately strive to save lives.