A new annual report from the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World provides insight into the nonprofit's successes in the past year as part of its ongoing effort to reduce the devastating global impact of tobacco smoking, as well as plans for how the organization will continue that fight into the future.
The report is presented as an interactive microsite that focuses on the Foundation's five Strategic Plan 2022-2024 goals: reducing barriers, tobacco harm reduction, agricultural diversification, transforming the tobacco industry, and the Foundation's future. The report offers the latest information on recent grantmaking efforts and charitable activities by the nonprofit to eliminate the death and disease caused by combustible tobacco and other toxic tobacco products. The information is presented in a dynamic microsite that includes video soundbites and infographics.
Tobacco smoking causes an estimated 8 million deaths every year worldwide, including more than a million people who die from secondhand smoke. While many of those deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries where smoking rates remain persistently high, smoking still claims the lives of 480,000 people every year in the United States alone.
The mission of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World is to end smoking in this generation. The nonprofit's Strategic Plan 2022-2024 is a roadmap for its grantmaking and charitable activities to achieve that goal within three categories of work: health and science research to accelerate quitting and switching to reduced risk products, agricultural diversification for farmers in Malawi dependent on tobacco crops, and transformation of the tobacco industry away from combustible products.
The new annual report details the latest on those efforts, as well as the many research reports and initiatives funded by the Foundation in the past year.
Objectives of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World
The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World's vision is a world free from the harms of combustible tobacco, as well as other toxic forms of tobacco, for the benefit of public health. That concept also encompasses the elimination of smoking-related deaths and diseases, and the diversification of tobacco-dependent agriculture and economies.
The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World has awarded more than $125 million in grants to fund research since its founding in 2017, including $27 million granted in 2022.
The Foundation's grantmaking and charitable efforts are focused on three broad categories: health and science research, agricultural diversification and industry transformation. Nonduplicative and novel research related to smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction are funded in the health and scientific research category. The grant projects complement ongoing tobacco control efforts to accelerate quitting and switching to reduced-risk products and contribute to the body of research regarding the economics of ending the smoking epidemic.
The agricultural diversification grant projects are focused on helping smallholder tobacco farmers in Malawi, one of the world's most tobacco-dependent economies, find competitive and sustainable alternative livelihoods. One of the nonprofit's grant projects in Malawi is the Centre for Agricultural Transformation, which provides smallholder tobacco farmers with access to research, new technologies, and other support to help them explore alternative crops.
The Foundation's work in the tobacco industry transformation category focuses on creating change within the global tobacco industry and nicotine ecosystem. The nonprofit's Tobacco Transformation Index aims to accelerate the reduction of harm caused by tobacco use through a bi-annual ranking of the world's 15 largest tobacco companies on their relative progress, or lack thereof, toward harm reduction.
The number of deaths related to smoking remain heartbreakingly high. The Foundation was formed to help the world's more than 1 billion smokers quit and reduce their risks from smoking, which remains the leading cause of preventable disease and premature death.
"From start to finish, the tobacco life cycle is an overwhelmingly polluting and damaging process ... It is not just about the lives of smokers and those around them, or even those involved in tobacco production. What is now at stake is the fate of an entire planet," according to an overview of global tobacco use from the World Health Organization.
New Annual Report Focuses on Five Main Goals
The new annual report from the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World offers an overview of the past year of the nonprofit's grantmaking efforts to extinguish the use of combustible tobacco, including a wealth of research and various initiatives around the world. The interactive annual report microsite also features video soundbites from the Foundation's grantees who provide information about their Foundation-funded work in 2022.
The report presents the Foundation's accomplishments that ladder back to its five Strategic Plan goals: reducing barriers, tobacco harm reduction, agricultural diversification, transforming the tobacco industry, and the Foundation's future. Each section provides valuable information about the Foundation's work that is guided by its seven core values: collaboration, excellence, integrity, urgency, diversity/equity/inclusion, innovation, and transparency.
Reducing Barriers
The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World funds grant projects that help reduce barriers that hinder tobacco smokers quitting or switching from combustibles and other toxic tobacco products to reduced-risk products (RRPs) such as e-vapor or oral smokeless products. These projects also seek to increase knowledge and research capacity in the area of tobacco harm reduction as it relates to ending smoking.
Foundation grantees include the Center of Excellence for the Acceleration of Harm Reduction (Catania, Italy); the Rose Research Center (Charlotte, North Carolina); Centre for Health Research and Education (United Kingdom), Knowledge-Action-Change (United Kingdom Analytisch-Biologisches Forschungslabor Gmbh (Germany); Cornell University (Ithaca, New York); The Influence Foundation (New York City); Alternative Research Initiative (Pakistan); Healthy Initiatives (Ukraine and former Soviet Union region); and Movimiento Pro Vecino (Mexico).
Tobacco Harm Reduction
One of the primary goals of the Foundation is to fund research in the area of tobacco harm reduction, including the effectiveness of RRPs in transitioning smokers away from the devastating health consequences of smoking cigarettes. One aspect of the annual report is to provide valuable insights and commentary from leading researchers aimed at explaining how their work can help reduce the hazards of tobacco smoking.
The focus on tobacco harm reduction is one shared by many anti-smoking leaders. "There's been too much emphasis on reducing demand and reducing supply and too little emphasis on offering people routes out ... and that's what tobacco harm reduction is," Gerry Stimson, director of Knowledge-Action-Change, said during an expert panel interview on understanding and leveraging tobacco harm reduction strategies.
Agricultural Diversification
The Foundation's grant projects in Malawi explore and promote sustainable agricultural alternatives for smallholder tobacco farmers, a country where tobacco is the most produced and exported crop.
One of the biggest projects is the Centre for Agricultural Transformation (CAT). In 2022, the CAT helped 80% of smallholder farmers that it works with adopt new agricultural technology, increasing productivity by 36%. The CAT also funded initiatives that helped farmers explore growing groundnuts, soybean, sunflower, pulses, livestock, mushrooms, bananas, dairy, garlic, chia, sesame, upland rice, cassava, honey and alternative protein for animal feed.
Transforming the Tobacco Industry
As part of its mission to foster change in the global tobacco industry that benefits public health, the Foundation produces the Tobacco Transformation Index. The Index is the first to rank the 15 largest global tobacco companies on their relative commitment to tobacco harm reduction.
The 2022 Index found that high risk products still make up 95% of the world's largest tobacco company retail sales by volume. However, it did find that some companies are making headway in offering RRPs. However, the availability of RRPs remains lower in low-to-medium income countries where the number of people who smoke remains high by world standards.
The Foundation's Future
The looking ahead section of the report addresses a potential future in which the world may one day be smoke free. The report finds that the Foundation is "well positioned" to progress in its mission to end smoking in this generation. The nonprofit expects that a key component of success in the coming years is the continued work of grantees in developing individual projects as well as through collaboration. By working together and supporting each other, the Foundation report said grantees are "leveraging their strengths and maximizing innovation."
"The Foundation also will continue to fund grants in our three broad categories of work, in which we have worked since our inception: health and science research, agricultural diversification in Malawi and industry transformation," the annual report reiterated. "We will fund research regarding alternatives to cigarettes and other combustible tobacco products, attitudes, and opinions of the general public towards tobacco harm reduction, verification studies, and convening stakeholders around relevant topics."
