The Highly Successful Tips From Former Smokers Campaign is Back with New Stories and New Ad Creative with the CDC’s Dr. Tim McAfee along with Marlene, a former smoker & Tips ad participant
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is unveiling the fifth installment of the “Tips From Former Smokers” campaign. The campaign features real people living with the harsh consequences of smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke. The new series of ads focus on illnesses people do not commonly associate with smoking, including macular degeneration and colorectal cancer.
The Tips campaign has proven to be successful and cost-effective. According to a September 2013 Lancet study that was, the 2012 Tips ads motivated 1.6 million smokers to make a quit attempt and an estimated 100,000 smokers to quit permanently. Additionally, the 2012 Tips campaign spent only $480 per smoker who quit and $393 per year of life saved according to a recent study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in December 2014.
Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the U.S. More than 16 million Americans are living with a smoking-related disease and every day thousands of young Americans become regular smokers, but nearly 70 percent of adults say they want to quit. Research shows quitting completely at any age has major and immediate health benefits.
Dr. Tim McAfee, Senior Medical Officer for the CDC’s Office on Smoking & Health along with a former smoker and Tips ad participant Marlene talk about the campaign and its overall impact. They share new ad creative, as well as tips on how you can quit smoking or help a loved one give up their addiction to tobacco.
Talent/Guest: Tim McAfee, MD, MPH, Senior Medical Officer, Office on Smoking and Health, NCCDPHP
Tim McAfee, MD, MPH, is Senior Medical Officer for CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health (OSH) within the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. He is responsible for providing guidance, support, and medical oversight to leadership for scientific, policy, and programmatic issues related to tobacco control and prevention, as well as marijuana. Prior to his current position, he served as the Director of the Office on Smoking and Health, where he oversaw a staff of over 130 people and a budget of $200 million. He led the development and evaluation of “Tips from Former Smokers”, the first federally-sponsored national anti-smoking media campaign that resulted in 1.6 million smokers trying to quit each year. He also stewarded three Surgeon General’s Reports on tobacco, including the 2014 landmark 50th anniversary report.
Dr. McAfee has been a principal investigator and co-investigator on numerous research studies focusing on questions related topublic health policy interventions, including tobacco use among adults and youth, smoke-free laws, media campaign effectiveness, and e-cigarettes patterns. He also conducted research on the effectiveness and dissemination of telephone- and Web-based tobacco cessation programs in medical systems and through government-sponsored quitlines. He is an author on over 100 publications. He helped found and served on the Board of Directors of the North American Quitline Consortium as well as numerous state and national tobacco policy advisory groups. He also authored the World Health Organization’s quitline manual for low- and middle-income countries.
Talent/Guest: Marlene, Former smoker featured in this year’s Tips campaign
Marlene started smoking at age 15 after receiving instruction on how to inhale from an older neighbor. Experimenting with cigarettes quickly turned into an addiction and she smoked for 46 years. When she was 56, she began having trouble with her vision, experiencing cloudiness and disturbances in her vision. Her vision deteriorated so severely that she mistook her finger for a carrot while preparing dinner. After multiple trips to eye specialists, Marlene was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration (AMD)—an eye disease that gets worse over time, has no cure and can eventually leave victims with no central vision. Marlene didn’t know that smoking doubles your risk for macular degeneration until after she was diagnosed. She has since quit smoking and has begun new treatment to help slow the progression of the disease – monthly painful injections directly into her eyes.
This interview is produced for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
