Anti-Tobacco Campaign Launched By CDC and Pasadena Public Health Department Focuses on Northwest Pasadena

Pasadena Public Health Department  and other city officials unveiled an anti-tobacco products and anti-menthol public awareness campaign Wednesday morning at City Hall that showcased a series of creative and eye-catching billboard-style displays that are set to pop up around town to help warn against the dangers of using menthol cigarettes, electronic vaping devices and tobacco-flavored products.

The English and Spanish language campaign is funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control’s Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) Program. It is focused on reaching Latino and African-American youths and adults, especially in Northwest Pasadena.

The displays are set to be featured as social media messages, bus shelter displays, interior placards inside Pasadena Transit buses and point-of-sale ads voluntarily used by tobacco retailers inside stores.

“It’s important for us to protect the health of Pasadena residents, especially those who cannot speak for themselves such as the children in our community. Targeted marketing to our children requires a response on our part in order to counter the effects and ensure that we are preventing their access to these harmful tobacco products,” said Pasadena Public Health Director Michael Johnson.

The Pasadena campaign is a three-year program to help increase awareness about the dangers of mentholated cigarettes, electronic cigarettes and flavored tobacco products, often cleverly packaged to entice young people to start using these dangerous products.

“Most young people who use tobacco report using flavored products,” said City Health Officer Dr. Ying-Ying Goh “These products are deadly tools that hook young people onto a lifetime of tobacco use.”

The City of Pasadena Public Health Department is combating the disproportionately high use of mentholated cigarettes, electronic cigarettes and flavored tobacco products by Hispanic/Latinos and African-Americans in the City, according to a press release.

“This campaign has a very important goal of advancing health equity. In addition, an innovate aspect of this campaign is that it will include the display of these ads inside tobacco retail establishments at the point of sale,” said Goh.

Tobacco use is still the number one preventable cause of death in the United States and statistics show the use of these types of tobacco products are very popular products with Hispanic/Latinos and African Americans, according to Goh.

Funding for the educational campaign comes from a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control Prevention’s Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) Program.

“This campaign is needed in our community. It’s hard-hitting and timely,” said Pasadena Vice-Mayor Gene Masuda.

Currently, the federal REACH program has provided 49 grants, but Pasadena is the only city-based health department in the country to receive funding and is also the only grantee using the funds for an anti-menthol, anti-tobacco product prevention effort.

“Historic evidence indicates that the menthol cigarette campaigns have been focused on sales targeted specifically to African-Americans in our communities,” said Johnson who mentioned that more than 70 percent of African-Americans live in the Northwest area of Pasadena.

The most recent available information from the California Healthy Kids survey indicates that the use of e-cigarattes among the PUSD teens in 2015 is still a significant public health risk with 16 percent of seventh graders, 29 percent of ninth graders and 34 percent of eleventh graders were reported having tried e-cigarettes.

“Today I’m here to say that this campaign is needed in the African-American community and in the community as a whole. The majority of those advertisements about cigarettes happen to be menthol in our publications as well as people of color in general. What we’re doing here as a city—I think we’re moving in steps in the right direction,” said District 1 Councilmember Tyron Hampton.

The current campaign was developed in conjunction with The Pastilla Institute, a Pasadena-based creative marketing and branding agency. Several local organizations helped provide input on shaping the campaign’s messages, including the Pasadena Tobacco Prevention Coalition, NATHA (Neighbors Acting Together Helping All), Day One and the Pasadena Cigarette Stompers Youth Ambassadors.

“We’re forever grateful to the CDC for this opportunity to work on countering pro tobacco influences in our community and supporting the funding to address these equity issues,” said Johnson.
Over the last decade, Pasadena has been a leader in the battle against tobacco-related death and disability through adoption of innovative tobacco control policies. For more information about the media campaign and other anti-tobacco efforts, visit www.cityofpasadena.net/publichealth/REACH, or call (626) 744-6014.