American Legacy Foundation^®

American Legacy Foundation (Legacy) is a national, independent public health foundation located in Washington, D.C. The foundation collaborates with national, state, and local organizations through grant awards, research initiatives, marketing efforts, and training. Legacy has four goals that guide its work to fight for the health and well-being of all generations by challenging tobacco use and the tobacco industry. Its goals are to reduce youth tobacco use; decrease exposure to secondhand smoke; increase successful quit rates; and reduce disparities in access to prevention and cessation services and in exposure to secondhand smoke.

Legacy’s work to reduce tobacco use among young people includes a major national tobacco youth prevention and education effort known as the truth^sm campaign. Advertising, grassroots and promotional events and an interactive website allow teens to get the facts about tobacco use and tobacco marketing and to get involved in the effort to inform their peers. To advance its youth prevention initiative, Legacy conducts a national school-based survey on teen tobacco use every two years. In addition, the foundation has committed nearly $35 million over three years in grant awards to states to foster statewide youth-led efforts against tobacco.

In addition, the foundation’s grants program also offers funding annually via national calls for proposals on a variety of tobacco prevention and control issues and offers funding opportunities to organizations for innovative ideas that may foster future large-scale programs to reduce tobacco use. Comprehensive assistance and training are provided to Legacy grantees as well as to state and local tobacco programs. Legacy has partnered with the American Cancer Society and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to launch a national training and resource center to provide ongoing guidance and expertise to new and established tobacco prevention and control programs.

Legacy is committed to reducing tobacco use among women and girls. As a part of its women and smoking initiative, Legacy launched the Great Start campaign to help pregnant women quit smoking. Great Start is the first national campaign of its kind and features a national telephone Quitline available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, offering free telephone counseling and assistance in English and Spanish language to pregnant women who want to quit smoking.

Legacy is having a major impact on public health through its support for programs designed to reduce tobacco use among several ethnic and cultural groups. Through its priority populations grant program, the foundation is distributing $21 million over three years to organizations that work to reduce tobacco use among one or more of the following racial/ethnic minority or under-served populations: African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender, Hispanic/Latino, Low Socioeconomic and Native American/Alaska Native.

In addition, Legacy has an extensive research and evaluation program that funds studies and publishes reports on tobacco prevention matters, including the factors that influence tobacco use in the United States. Published findings will be housed in the Legacy National Tobacco Documents Library, a foundation-funded entity on the campus at the University of California San Francisco that also provides permanent Internet access to 40 million pages of once-secret tobacco industry documents.

American Legacy Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization established in March 1999 as a result of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between a coalition of attorneys general in 46 states and five U.S. territories and the tobacco industry. The organization is funded primarily by payments designated by the settlement.

The foundation is led by President and Chief Executive Officer Cheryl Healton, Dr. P.H., and is governed by a diverse board of directors representing youth, state governors, legislators, and attorneys general and experts in the medical, education, and public health fields. Board members are: North Carolina State Representative Alma Adams, Ph.D.; Kansas high school student Jaime Fiorruci-Hughes; Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening, Washington Attorney General Christine O. Gregoire; U.T. M.D. Anderson Cancer Center researcher Ellen R. Gritz, Ph.D.; Utah Governor Michael O. Leavitt; President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Steven A. Schroeder, M.D.; Michigan State Senator John J.H. Schwarz; Kansas Attorney General Carla J. Stovall; and University of Michigan professor and researcher Kenneth Warner, Ph.D.

For more information about the American Legacy Foundation, please visit www.americanlegacy.org.