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American Legacy Foundation® Honors Champion of Anti-Tobacco Fight
8/8/2007
Professor Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco, to Receive the American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professorship in Tobacco Control
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Legacy Foundation® – a national public health foundation dedicated to reducing tobacco use in the U.S. – announced a gift to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to honor Dr. Stanton Glantz with a new distinguished professorship in tobacco control. Glantz is a life-long anti-tobacco champion who has conducted seminal research linking secondhand smoke to heart disease and research demonstrating that large scale tobacco control programs not only reduce smoking but immediately save lives.
Glantz is the first recipient of the American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professorship in Tobacco Control for the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF. Often described as the “Ralph Nader of the anti-tobacco movement,” he is a widely respected scientist and advocate for tobacco control. From smoking in movies to secondhand smoke to the grave conflicts presented by universities’ acceptance of tobacco funding for research, Glantz’s high quality research, combined with his savvy and unwavering focus has earned him both admiration and respect. According to a 1996 Stanford Magazine article, he “helped change the terms of the tobacco debate by recasting smoking as a social and political issue, not just a medical problem.”
“Stan Glantz is a mentor to many in the tobacco control movement, including me,” said Cheryl G. Healton, Dr. P.H., president and CEO of the American Legacy Foundation. “Stan was the right person, in the right place at the right time, to galvanize and help lead anti-smoking efforts. He is smart, tenacious and never backs down, so he has earned the respect of all of us, including his adversaries. His work over the past three decades has resulted in increased transparency about the tobacco industry, remarkable changes in the social acceptance of tobacco and its negative effects and he has ultimately saved lives. It is with great pride that the Board of Directors and staff of the American Legacy Foundation honor him with this distinguished chair.”
Both professionally and personally, Glantz has worked on several fronts for more than 30 years to protect and inform the nation of Big Tobacco’s deadly product. Currently, as head of the national advocacy program, Smoke Free Movies, Glantz has worked aggressively to raise awareness about the negative impact that smoking scenes in movies have on youth, making the topic a priority on the public health, political and media agendas. In part as a result of concerted efforts led by Glantz over the past few years, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) finally took a tentative first step in responded to mounting pressure and recently announced that smoking in a film will be “considered” in future movie ratings. He has earned the support from national health partners, including Legacy, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization and more.
“The good news,” said Glantz, “is that the studios and MPAA have been put on notice that they are delivering 390,000 kids a year to Big Tobacco. The bad news is that the MPAA only pretended to solve the problem. They need to put in place a meaningful policy, an R rating for smoking.”
In 1996, Glantz co-authored The Cigarette Papers, the published version of the incriminating internal tobacco documents first leaked to him. Today, these and other once-secret tobacco industry documents are housed at the UCSF Library. Researchers from around the world can electronically sift through 47 million pages of memos that reveal Big Tobacco’s internal strategies and tactics – documents which have by their very own nature changed society’s perception of the industry.
“Professor Glantz's academic work has had enormous impact on public policy because he has attempted to answer difficult questions about tobacco-related diseases and how to prevent them,” said David A. Kessler, Dean of the School of Medicine at UCSF. “We are proud that he is on the UCSF faculty and appreciate the American Legacy Foundation's recognition of his work.”
Glantz, a professor of medicine at UCSF, has continued to serve on a variety of scientific peer review bodies throughout the years, including the California State Scientific Review Panel on Toxic Air Contaminants, various NIH study sections, and for other granting agencies, as well as an associate editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and a reviewer for leading journals, such as Journal of the American Medical Association, British Medical Journal, American Journal of Public Health, Circulation, and Pediatrics. Glantz received his bachelor's degree from the University of Cincinnati, graduate degrees from Stanford University and postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco. Glantz received the American Public Health Association, Alcohol and Other Drugs section Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and in 2005, was elected to the Institute of Medicine. He is the author or co-author of 21 books and more than 200 scholarly articles and is frequently a source for journalists from People to 60 Minutes. He and his wife of 35 years, Marsha, have two children.
This chair will be renamed the Stanton Glantz Distinguished Professorship in Tobacco Control upon his retirement.
The American Legacy Foundation® is dedicated to building a world where young people reject tobacco and anyone can quit. Located in Washington, D.C., the foundation develops programs that address the health effects of tobacco use, especially among vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by the toll of tobacco, through grants, technical assistance and training, partnerships, youth activism, and counter-marketing and grassroots marketing campaigns. The foundation’s programs include truth®, a national youth smoking prevention campaign that has been cited as contributing to significant declines in youth smoking; EXTM, an innovative public health program designed to speak to smokers in their own language and change the way they approach quitting; research initiatives exploring the causes, consequences and approaches to reducing tobacco use; and a nationally-renowned program of outreach to priority populations. The American Legacy Foundation was created as a result of the November 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) reached between attorneys general from 46 states, five U.S. territories and the tobacco industry. Visit www.americanlegacy.org.
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Contact: Julia Cartwright, 202-454-5596, jcartwright@americanlegacy.org