Five Questions With: Eileen Howard Boone

EILEEN HOWARD BOONE is CVS Health’s senior vice president of corporate social responsibility and philanthropy. / COURTESY CVS HEALTH
EILEEN HOWARD BOONE is CVS Health’s senior vice president of corporate social responsibility and philanthropy. / COURTESY CVS HEALTH

CVS Health Corp. recently announced the launch of Be The First, an initiative to help those who smoke quit and ensure that those who don’t smoke, never start. Eileen Howard Boone, CVS Health’s senior vice president of corporate social responsibility and philanthropy, and president of the CVS Health Foundation, talked with Providence Business News about the initiative.

Howard Boone was instrumental in leading stakeholder engagement around the company’s decision to cease selling tobacco products and in gaining strategic support from prominent anti-tobacco nonprofit organizations and health care entities for the company’s decision. A resident of Barrington, she is a member of the board of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which is collaborating with CVS Health on its anti-smoking initiative.

PBN: Tell us more about Be The First: What are its goals and objectives, and how does it relate to the company’s decision to cease selling cigarettes and other tobacco products in its stores?

HOWARD BOONE: Be The First is a five-year, $50 million initiative to help deliver the first tobacco-free generation, and advance CVS Health’s broader commitment to helping people lead tobacco-free lives. Supported and funded by CVS Health and the CVS Health Foundation, Be The First supports comprehensive education and advocacy, tobacco control and healthy behavior programming that is directed at youth and young adults who use tobacco or are at risk of becoming tobacco users. It is also focused on continuing to support cessation programs for adult smokers who expose children to tobacco use.

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The actions we took as a company to eliminate the sale of tobacco in our retail stores in 2014 showed that the private sector can have an impact on public health, but there is more that we can do. Be The First is the next step to our efforts to help people lead tobacco-free lives by expanding our focus to address the prevalence of youth tobacco use.

PBN: How will you communicate with youth to get the Be The First message across?

HOWARD BOONE: We’ve launched a robust online #BeTheFirst campaign; as we know social media has become a powerful communications platform, especially for young people. Research also shows that messaging and imagery depicting tobacco use in social media can be a predictor of future smoking tendency, over and above the influence of TV and movies. Our campaign invites middle- and high-school students, college students, parents, educators and anyone who cares about the health of our kids to remove messaging and imagery that promote smoking and tobacco use from their social media channels. We believe that if we can encourage kids to adopt and advocate for tobacco-free behavior in the virtual world where they gather, they will do the same in the physical world, where it really matters to their overall health.

PBN: There have been many youth anti-smoking campaigns during the past decade that have not succeeded in ending youth smoking. How will Be The First differ from past campaigns?

HOWARD BOONE: I think Be The First comes at a time when youth activism in social change is growing and the public health community really sees an opportunity to finish the job and end youth tobacco use for good. So not only is Be The First an invitation for young people to be a part of something historic that positively affects their generation, it also delivers significant resources to the public health community to succeed against this epidemic.

PBN: Can you elaborate on CVS Health’s plans to collaborate or partner with other businesses or organizations to spread the Be The First message?

HOWARD BOONE: While the public health community knows which strategies work to promote the prevention of smoking and tobacco use, there is a need to establish more public-private partnerships to aggressively and more fully implement effective programs. Be The First aims to do that, so we can move one step closer to delivering the country’s first tobacco-free generation.

To help us achieve our goal, we have enlisted the help of leading national organizations strongly positioned to address a unique part of the tobacco epidemic: This includes advocacy programming with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, awareness-driving tools with DoSomething.org and education initiatives with Scholastic, as well as new partnerships with the American Cancer Society and the National Urban League to accelerate declines in the rate of smoking and other tobacco use among teens and young adults.

A great example right here in Rhode Island is the CVS Health Foundation’s $100,000 grant to the United Way of Rhode Island and the state Department of Health to help youth quit smoking and speak out on tobacco in their communities. To date, the program has supported 13 organizations that developed anti-smoking campaigns and provided educational resources to more than 80 schools across the state – engaging more than 1,000 students.
PBN: CVS Health has committed to a five-year, $50 million campaign. What will success look like and how will you measure it?
HOWARD BOONE:
We’ve established a set of aggressive, measurable goals that we believe are achievable over the next five years. These include contributing to a 3 percent decline in the national youth smoking rate, a 10 percent decline in the number of new youth smokers and doubling the number of tobacco-free colleges and universities.

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