Tobacco industry sponsorship of cultural and sporting events and funding of educational and community-based organizations that address critical issues in low-income and minority communities has long been a tactic of the tobacco industry. Sponsorship of these events is an effective way for the industry to increase exposure to a brand name, to associate a brand with a lifestyle or event, normalize the use of tobacco, and promote the tobacco company as a supporting member of the community. This has become a highly effective form of indirect advertising that helps to shape attitudes towards smoking by glamorizing tobacco products and their use, while diminishing the effectiveness of tobacco control programs, especially those aimed at young people.

A statewide CTS survey conducted in 2002 reported that 65% of adult respondents thought tobacco sponsorship of sporting or cultural events should be banned, but little work had been done in this in San Francisco so the Coalition decided to take the issue on.

The Tobacco Free Project developed the following objective for this project:

• By June 30, 2007, two private or public events (e.g., film festivals, community events, theatre events) in San Francisco in each of the following three priority populations: African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, LGBT will adopt a policy not to accept tobacco contributions for the events.

This is a primary objective, addressing Communities of Excellence primary indicator 1.1.6. This objective was chosen by the San Francisco Tobacco Free Coalition and staff through the Communities of Excellence assessment conducted in Spring 2003.

Project activities focused around utilization of the Community Action Model (CAM) through the Community Capacity Building (CCB) process. The CCB process is asset based and builds on the strengths or capacity of a community to create change from within and mobilize community members and agencies to change environmental factors promoting economic and environmental inequalities. Fundamental to this model is a critical analysis that identifies the underlying social, economic, and environmental forces that create the health and social inequalities the community wants to address.

The model has two goals, 1) To promote environmental change by moving away from projects that focus on changing individual lifestyles and behaviors and mobilizing community members and agencies to address issues that promote economic and environmental inequalities, and 2) To assist people in acquiring the skills needed to do it themselves.

The CAM Model includes five steps.

Step 1: Skill-based training in which community advocates choose an area of focus.
Step 2: Define, design and conduct a community diagnosis to identify the root causes of a community concern or issue and explore how to overcome it.
Step 3: Analyze the results of community diagnosis and prepare findings.
Step 4: Select, plan and implement an environmental change action and educational activities intended to support it.
Step 5: Implement the action and ensure that the policy outcome is enforced and maintained.

The three community-based projects that received funding to work on tobacco sponsorship issues began their work in April 2005. Each project recruited and trained a group of community advocates: One project (GASA) recruited African American adolescent girls, a second (QMATS) recruited LGBT adults, and the third (RIDE) recruited Asian American young adults.

The first advocate training was conducted in June 2005 by TFP staff to ground staff and advocates from the three funded projects in the community capacity building process. This training included an overview of tobacco as a social justice issue describing the economic, health, and environmental impact of the tobacco industry and an overview of Community Action Model including interactive games to show participants examples of previously successful actions that were completed through the CAM process.

Over the project period, each project met regularly with advocates for trainings, planning meetings, and activities, providing more than 100 meetings and skill-based trainings to advocates. Advocates participated in discussions about issues they wanted to address around tobacco sponsorship. During this process, advocates critically identified and analyzed the underlying social, economic, and environmental factors creating the health and social inequities that needed to be addressed.

Each Tobacco Free Sponsorship Project conducted a community diagnosis to determine the root causes of the issue. The diagnosis for each project included:

• Contacting other Prop 99 funded projects to gather available information and educational materials for their respective work.
• Researching cultural specific public or private events and history of receiving tobacco sponsorship.
• Researching current sponsorship policies at public and private events.
• Identifying decision-making bodies and the process to get policies adopted.

In preparing to meet the demands of the project, the advocates learned about tobacco control issues and policies and conducted extensive research in their respective areas to assess support for events that agreed to a “no tobacco sponsorship” policy.

With the help of project staff and evaluators, advocates designed and implemented the tools they needed to assess the extent of the issue they were working on and collect data. As part of their community diagnosis, each project completed the Midwest Strategy Chart, researched events in their respective communities, and attended a number of community specific events to gather information. The projects conducted public opinion surveys and/or key informant interviews.

In Step 3, the results from the community diagnosis were analyzed and findings were prepared. During this phase, advocates worked with the project evaluator to learn how to input and analyze the data they collected and how to most effectively use the data to present their findings. From their research and public opinion surveys, advocates from all three sponsorship projects found strong support for cultural organizations and events to adopt tobacco free sponsorship policies.

Based on the results of their community diagnoses, advocates from each project developed an action plan that: 1) was achievable, 2) had the potential for sustainability, and 3) would compel organizations to adopt policies to benefit the community. (In this case, the “solution” these projects would address was already pre-determined by the RFA to which the three community-based groups responded: to get events to pass no tobacco sponsorship policies.)

Advocates from each project drafted a model policy and designed and implemented an advocacy campaign to gain community support for adopting tobacco free sponsorship policies. Each project found that more traditional media campaigns and writing op-ed pieces or letters to the editor were of less value than raising awareness about the tobacco sponsorship issue by establishing relationships directly with event coordinators and gaining support for the issue by participating in the organization’s events. Each project was successful in getting organizations to adopt tobacco free sponsorship policies.

The last step of the CAM model ensures that the action or policy is maintained over the long term and is enforced by the appropriate bodies. The community action model provides information about how to conduct enforcement activities, such as using polls or conducting compliance surveys. As various organizations and events adopted tobacco free sponsorship policies, advocates from each of the three projects developed and implemented plans to ensure the new policies would be implemented. These plans included informational campaigns to inform the public of the new policies and monitoring private and public events to ensure that no tobacco sponsorship was taking place.

The evaluation design for this objective was non-experimental and categorized as a “multiple policy-policy adoption only” according to the Otis Evaluation Guide. This design measured the extent to which each of three funded organizations achieved their objective of getting two events in their respective communities to pass policies prohibiting tobacco sponsorship of their events.

No sampling procedures were used in the overall evaluation design. The three organizations chosen to implement this objective were selected based on their responses to an RFA issued by the Tobacco Free Project. The RFA specified a number of communities that had been targeted by the tobacco industry, and the interested organizations from these communities responded to the RFA. Each of the three projects used convenience sampling techniques to collect public opinion data from a minimum of 100 attendees at various community events.

Three major kinds of data collection took place in order to evaluate this objective:

• In-person Public Opinion Polls
• Key Informant Telephone Interviews
• Retrospective Pre-Test Data (measuring skills acquisition among advocates)

All three of the projects were able to get at least two events in their respective communities to adopt policies prohibiting tobacco industry sponsorship of their events – and two of the three projects exceeded the objective, with one getting three and the other getting four events to adopt such polices. The events are listed below.

The three projects learned a number of valuable lessons along the way including:

• The CAM model is an effective intervention as demonstrated by the fact that all three of the funded organizations either achieved or exceeded their objective to get two events in their respective communities to adopt no tobacco industry sponsorship policies.
• Each of the three projects found that more traditional means of community organizing and media advocacy, e.g. organizing letter writing campaigns, gaining the support of sympathetic agencies etc. were less effective than going directly to organizers of the targeted events.
• Approaching events with an analysis that draws parallels between the event or organization’s mission, e.g. healthy communities, and adopting a policy not to accept tobacco industry funding is an effective approach.
• The LGBT community needs to raise the perception of risk involved in taking tobacco money. These events and organizations need to understand that taking tobacco industry funding can negatively impact their reputations.
• Providing positive sponsorships to events/organizations while you are also trying to convince them not to take tobacco industry sponsorship is an effective strategy.
• QMATS advocates segmented the LGBT community and varied approaches and strategies accordingly.
• Older and younger advocates can work successfully together and have positive influences on one another.
• Educating people about the ways in which the LGBT community is targeted by the tobacco industry is still an effective way to get people involved.
• RIDE advocates found that persistence is essential. It can take a long time to build the relationships needed to convince an event/organization to adopt sponsorship policies. In once instance it took only three months, but in another 18 months.

Background

The City and County of San Francisco is a culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and economically diverse urban community with an estimated population of nearly 740,000 residents in 2005. Thirty-seven percent of the population is foreign born (compared to 26% statewide), and 46% speak a primary language at home other than English (compared to 39.5% statewide). San Franciscans are better educated and have higher per capita and median incomes than their California counterparts.1

The tobacco industry has long history of sponsorship in the U.S. targeting and providing resources to organizations needing financial support for their causes, including African American, Latino, gay and lesbian, and community organizations that address issues such as HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, disaster relief, hunger, and human rights. Sponsorship of cultural and sporting events and funding of educational and community-based organizations is an effective way to increase exposure to a brand name, to associate a brand with a lifestyle or event, normalize the use of tobacco, and promote the tobacco company as a supporting member of the community.2 This has become a highly effective form of indirect advertising that helps to shape attitudes towards smoking by glamorizing tobacco products and their use, while diminishing the effectiveness of tobacco control programs, especially those aimed at young people.

Scarce research has been done in this area. However, it is an issue that the Coalition is interested in pursuing given the disproportionate marketing of tobacco projects in terms of direct advertising and sponsorship of events and organizations in communities of color, as well as the LGBT community and low income groups. Policies that eliminate tobacco sponsorship would help to counter pro-tobacco influences in these communities.

Objective

By June 30, 2007, two private or public events (e.g., film festivals, community events, theatre events) in San Francisco in each of the following three priority populations: African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, LGBT will adopt a policy not to accept tobacco contributions for the events.

This is a primary objective, addressing Communities of Excellence primary indicator 1.1.6. This objective was chosen by the San Francisco Tobacco Free Coalition and staff through the Communities of Excellence assessment conducted in Spring 2003.

A statewide CTS survey conducted in 2002 reported that 65% of adult respondents think sponsorship of sporting or cultural events should be banned. So far, very little concentrated work has been done in this area in San Francisco. No education or public awareness campaign was implemented and no data had been collected regarding public awareness about the issue.

According to one study conducted by the Tobacco Industry Monitoring and Enforcement Project (TIME),3 a number of events and organizations in San Francisco, including rodeos, dance companies, theatre productions, and museums, are sponsored by tobacco companies. In 1992, San Francisco adopted an ordinance that banned tobacco advertising on city property. This ordinance covers events that take place on city (such as street fairs, etc.) as well as events at city-owned stadiums. However implementation of the outdoor tobacco ordinance adopted in San Francisco in 1998 which tobacco advertising on private property was effectively halted. (In 2001 the Supreme Court struck down the Massachusetts law that restricted outdoor tobacco advertising close to schools and public parks beyond limitations set by federal law)

A few organizations in San Francisco already have policies banning tobacco sponsorship of events. For example, MECA, a local agency that organizes Cinco de Mayo, Carnaval, and Sept 16th festivals in San Francisco adopted a voluntary policy not to accept tobacco sponsorship many years ago, and the organizers of the Gay Pride Parade have also adopted a tobacco-free sponsorship policy.

The TFP sponsors some organizations that do not accept tobacco and/or tobacco food subsidiary company sponsorship or donations. As a condition of sponsorship support, TFP requires a tobacco free sponsorship for a specific event. TFP does not require a formal organizational policy because many organizations are hesitant to adopt such a policy beyond a specific event when continued funding from TFP is not guaranteed due to potential budget reductions.

To address tobacco industry sponsorship in San Francisco, the Tobacco Free Project (TFP) funded three community-based organizations representing African American, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT), and Asian/Pacific Islander communities to involve community advocates in designing and implementing tobacco free sponsorship policy initiatives at selected private and public events. The three community-based organizations are the Girls After School Academy (GASA), Queers Mobilized Against Tobacco Sponsorship (QMATS), and the RIDE Project.

Intervention

Like all of the community capacity building projects funded by the Tobacco Free Project, interventions utilized by the three projects included implementation of the Community Action Model (CAM) through the Community Capacity Building (CCB) process. The CCB process is asset based and builds on the strengths or capacity of a community to create change from within and mobilize community members and agencies to change environmental factors promoting economic and environmental inequalities. Fundamental to this model is a critical analysis that identifies the underlying social, economic, and environmental forces that create the health and social inequalities the community wants to address.

The Community Action Model is a 5-step, community driven model that was developed in the context of tobacco-related health disparities. CAM is based on the theory of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator who integrated educational practice with liberation from oppressive conditions, emphasizing dialogue, grounding education in lived experiences, and raising people’s awareness to believe they have power to address oppression. The CAM model involves participatory action research approaches and is asset based, building on the strengths of a community to create change from within.

TFP has implemented the community action model since 1996 by funding community-based organizations in San Francisco that work with community advocates/members. Designed to move toward environmental change in organizational practices, the five steps of the model have been successfully implemented, with community members working to address social determinants of tobacco-related and other health disparities.

The model has two goals:

• To promote environmental change by moving away from projects that focus on changing individual lifestyles and behaviors and mobilizing community members and agencies to address issues that promote economic and environmental inequalities.
• To assist people in acquiring the skills needed to do it themselves.

The Community Action Model involves a 5-step process:

Step 1: Skill-based training in which community advocates choose an area of focus.
Step 2: Define, design and conduct a community diagnosis to identify the root causes of a community concern or issue and explore how to overcome it.
Step 3: Analyze the results of community diagnosis and prepare findings.
Step 4: Select, plan and implement an environmental change action and educational activities intended to support it.
Step 5: Implement the action and ensure that the policy outcome is enforced and maintained.

CAM Step 1: Train advocates, name the issue, choose area of focus

The three community-based projects that received funding to work on tobacco sponsorship issues began their work in April 2005. Each project recruited and trained a group of community advocates: GASA recruited African American adolescent girls,QMATS recruited LGBT adults, and RIDE recruited Asian American young adults. A more detailed description of the advocates recruited by each organization and the length of time advocates worked with the projects can be found in the individual case studies for each organization that follows this report.

The first advocate training was conducted in June 2005 by TFP staff to project staff and advocates from the three funded projects in the community action process. This training included an overview of tobacco as a social justice issue describing the economic, health, and environmental impact of the tobacco industry and an overview of CAM including interactive games to show participants examples of previously successful actions that were completed through the CAM process.

Over the project period, each project met regularly with advocates for trainings, planning meetings, and activities, providing more than 100 meetings and skill-based trainings to advocates. Advocates participated in discussions about issues they wanted to address and then chose a focus area. During this process, advocates critically identified and analyzed the underlying social, economic, and environmental factors creating the health and social inequities that needed to be addressed.

CAM Step 2: Define, design, and do a community diagnosis

Each Tobacco Free Sponsorship Project conducted a community diagnosis to determine the root causes of the issue. The diagnosis for each project included:

• Contacting other Prop 99 funded project to gather available information and educational materials for their respective work.
• Researching cultural specific public or private events and history of receiving tobacco sponsorship.
• Researching current sponsorship policies at public and private events.
• Identifying decision-making bodies and the process to get policies adopted.

In preparing to meet the demands of the project, the advocates learned about tobacco control issues and policies and conducted extensive research in their respective areas to assess support for events that agreed to a “no tobacco sponsorship” policy.

• GASA youth advocates learned how the 400-year relationship of the tobacco industry with the African American community evolved from slaves working on tobacco plantations to significant contributions to African American educational institutions and sponsorships of African American sports and cultural events in the present day.
• QMATS researched tobacco industry marketing strategies as a major contributor to LGBT and HIV/AIDS organizations, events, and publications.
• Project RIDE researched how the import car culture became an easy way for the tobacco industry to target the huge demographic of young – predominantly Asian/Pacific Islanders who are involved in car shows, racing, and auto body customizing.

With the help of project staff and evaluators, advocates designed and implemented the tools they needed to assess the extent of the issue they were working on and collect data. As part of their community diagnosis, each project completed the Midwest Strategy Chart, researched events in their respective communities, and attended a number of community specific events to gather information. The projects conducted public opinion surveys and/or key informant interviews.

• GASA advocates researched a variety of African American focused events and collected surveys at seven venues throughout San Francisco to obtain public opinion data about tobacco industry sponsorship of community events.
• QMATS advocates researched current and active LGBT events in San Francisco and their sponsorship status, conducted several hundred opinion surveys, and conducted a series of key informant interviews to assess the challenges, barriers, and/or support of a policy not to accept tobacco industry contributions.
• Project RIDE conducted extensive research into how the tobacco industry heavily targets Asian Americans and young adults and sponsors many racing events, studied eight different events, and collected nearly 300 public opinion surveys.

CAM Step 3: Analyze results of community diagnosis

In Step 3, the results from the community diagnosis were analyzed and findings were prepared. During this phase, advocates worked with the project evaluator to learn how to input and analyze the data they collected and how to most effectively use the data to present their findings.

From their research and public opinion surveys, advocates from all three sponsorship projects found strong support for cultural organizations and events to adopt tobacco free sponsorship policies.

CAM Step 4: Select action or activity and implement

Based on the results of their community diagnoses, advocates from each project developed an action plan that: 1) was achievable, 2) had the potential for sustainability, and 3) would compel organizations to adopt policies to benefit the community. (In this case, the “solution” these projects would address was already pre-determined by the RFA to which the three community-based groups responded: to get events to pass no tobacco sponsorship policies.)

Advocates from each project drafted a model policy and designed and implemented an advocacy campaign to gain community support for adopting tobacco free sponsorship policies. Each project found that more traditional media campaigns and writing op-ed pieces or letters to the editor were of less value than raising awareness about the tobacco sponsorship issue by establishing relationships directly with event coordinators and gaining support for the issue by participating in the organization’s events.

• QMATS developed informal personal relationships with decision-makers as the most culturally effective way to approach LGBT organizations. The advocates participated in Frameline events for the June 2005-06 LGBT film festival with June 2007 being the celebration of the adoption of the tobacco free sponsorship policy.
• Project RIDE participated in all of the JDM car events and, over the course of the campaign, attended nine separate events to promote tobacco free sponsorship at import car events.
• GASA developed relationships with event coordinators and raised awareness and support for the issue by volunteering and distributing information to event participants. The advocates participated at a fundraising event at Bayview Opera House by volunteering as models in March 2006 and by volunteering at the June 2006 Black Film Festival.
• Each project was successful in getting organizations to adopt tobacco free sponsorship policies:
• GASA was successful in getting the two organizations it targeted to adopt tobacco free sponsorship event policies: the Bayview Opera House and the San Francisco Black Film Festival.
• As a result of QMATS advocacy, four LGBT organizations adopted tobacco free sponsorship policies for their events: Frameline Film Festival, Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, Communities United Against Violence, and Outreach Program for Transgenders in Crisis.
• Project RIDE targeted three events in the Asian Pacific Islander community and was successful in getting each to adopt a tobacco free sponsorship policy for one of their events: Asian Heritage Street Festival, JDM Theory Car Shows, and Bindlestiff Studios.

CAM Step 5: Maintain and enforce action or activity

The last step ensures that the action or policy is maintained over the long term and is enforced by the appropriate bodies. The community action model provides information about how to conduct enforcement activities, such as using polls or conducting compliance surveys.

As various organizations and events adopted tobacco free sponsorship policies, advocates from each of the three projects developed and implemented plans to ensure the new policies would be implemented. These plans included informational campaigns to inform the public of the new policies and monitoring private and public events to ensure that no tobacco sponsorship was taking place.

Several overarching conclusions emerged from a review of progress reports and follow-up key informant interviews.

Conclusions

• The CAM model is an effective intervention as demonstrated by the fact that all three of the funded organizations either achieved or exceeded their objective to get two events in their respective communities to adopt no tobacco industry sponsorship policies.
• Each of the three projects found that more traditional means of community organizing and media advocacy, e.g. organizing letter writing campaigns, gaining the support of sympathetic agencies etc. were less effective than going directly to organizers of the targeted events.

Lessons Learned

• Approaching events with an analysis that draws parallels between the event or organization’s mission, e.g. healthy communities, and adopting a policy not to accept tobacco industry funding is an effective approach.

The LGBT community needs to raise the perception of risk involved in taking tobacco money. These events and organizations need to understand that taking tobacco industry funding can negatively impact their reputations.

Providing positive sponsorships to events/organizations while you are also trying to convince them not to take tobacco industry sponsorship is an effective strategy.

QMATS advocates segmented the LGBT community and varied approaches and strategies accordingly.

Older and younger advocates can work successfully together and have positive influences on one another.

Educating people about the ways in which the LGBT community is targeted by the tobacco industry is still an effective way to get people involved.

RIDE advocates found that persistence is essential. It can take a long time to build the relationships needed to convince an event/organization to adopt sponsorship policies. In one instance it took only three months, but in another 18 months.