In 2014, CVS Health became the first national retail pharmacy chain to remove all tobacco products from its stores. Since then, the company has committed $50 million dollars to preventing tobacco use among youth.
CVS Health has significantly supported the Tobacco Prevention Toolkit program at Stanford University School of Medicine under the leadership of Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, PhD, Professor (Research) of Pediatrics (Adolescent Medicine). The Tobacco Prevention Toolkit program is a free resource available online to anyone who works with youth, including educators, administrators, parents, and guardians. The goals of the Toolkit’s curriculum are for students to understand basic information about various types of tobacco products, gain awareness of deceptive marketing strategies used by tobacco manufacturers, and gain skills to refuse experimentation and use of tobacco. It also gives school teachers and administrators the resources to develop and set new school policies. The Toolkit is adaptable to fit the individual needs of educators and students in all types of settings.
Thanks to CVS Health’s generous support, the Tobacco Prevention Toolkit has made significant progress toward intercepting the unprecedented rise in teen use of tobacco products. The Toolkit has been expanded to include modules on other tobacco products such as hookah and smokeless tobacco. It has also been translated into Spanish and Chinese, making it accessible to an even broader range of educators and youth. Additionally, the Toolkit has been accessed in over 50 cities in California, 23 states in the U.S., and five countries.