CVS Health launches Be The First youth anti-smoking campaign

CVS HEALTH CORP. is launching a five-year, $50 million initiative called “Be The First," which is aimed at helping deliver the first tobacco-free generation.
CVS HEALTH CORP. is launching a five-year, $50 million initiative called “Be The First," which is aimed at helping deliver the first tobacco-free generation.

WOONSOCKET – Two years ago CVS Health Corp. banned the sale of tobacco products from its stores, and now it is launching a five-year, $50 million initiative called “Be The First” aimed at helping deliver the first tobacco-free generation.
Through “Be The First,” CVS Health is partnering with the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Cancer Society, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Scholastic and the National Urban League, among others, to fight tobacco use.
With funding from CVS Health and CVS Health Foundation, Be The First will support education, advocacy, tobacco control and healthy intervention programming aimed at youth and young adults.
According to information from the company, tobacco use remains the No. 1 preventable cause of disease and death in the United States, and that a rise in youth smoking is “one of the most alarming trends in the tobacco epidemic.”
Goals for Be The First include:

  • Contributing to a 3 percent decline in the national youth smoking rate
  • 10 percent decline in the number of new youth smokers
  • Doubling the number of tobacco-free college and university campuses

“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,” Dr. Troyen A. Brennan, chief medical officer for CVS Health, said in a statement. “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. 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.”

The initiative 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, CVS said. It also will support community-based cessation programs for adult smokers.

“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,” Matthew L. Myers, president, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said. “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.”

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Be The First also will support a campaign to encourage tobacco-free social media. The #BeTheFirst social campaign will include shareable videos and graphics to enable youth to express their commitment to “be the first” generation to lead tobacco-free lives.

Illustrating the need for the initiative, CVS cited statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which say that each day, more than 3,800 children under the age of 18 smoke their first cigarette and more than 2,100 youth and young adults who have experimented with cigarettes become new regular, daily smokers.

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