2010 - Public Relations Society of America

eing part of the same side in a social conflict” (p. 2), data from the website and interviews was
analyzed for emergent themes to demonstrate how CTFK participates in and influences the
tobacco control social movement.
Developed partnerships. According to the CTFK website, they have more than 130
organizational partners, including public health, medical, education, civic, corporate, youth and
religious organizations. The three primary organizations CTFK has worked with over the past 12
years are the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and American Lung
Association. Also, they work closely with tobacco control coalitions on the state and local level.
In addition to sharing research, many of the press statements, press releases and reports provide
information from multiple partners involved with CTFK.
These partnerships involve funding, information exchange, and working on issues
together. According to Fisher, CTFK “still get(s) some money from Robert Wood Johnson. We
get money from The Legacy Foundation, Cancer Society, Heart Association, and the rest we
fundraise.” This is also presented in the 2008 Annual Report, which lists American Cancer
Society, American Legacy Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as $1,000,000 plus
donors, and the American Heart Association as a donor in the $100,000 to $499,000 range.
In the international arena, Yin reported that the in-country partners provide key insights
“into the political systems to understand how to advocate and put effective policies in place so
that Indonesians and Chinese can be protected.” Hurley further described the international
partnerships between both the other grantees of the Bloomberg Initiative and the organizations in
the specific countries as vital to accomplish goals, a way to reinforce each others efforts, and a
great way to create lasting change by empowering the local organizations.
Not only does CTFK receive funding from partners, but they also distribute funding to
state and local coalitions. Hutchinson described how each year the advocacy department
develops a strategic plan with the regional directors, key members from other departments, and
the president of CTFK. In this meeting, they discuss key states, coalitions and partner
organizations CTFK can work with to accomplish policy goals and “by the end of year, we have
a list of 5 or 6 top priority states that we are going to set aside money for” stated Hutcinson.
In terms of working with state and local coalitions, Novelli expressed that “the state
coalitions were pretty strong and getting stronger. So we were pretty supportive of them. Doing
research, packaging research, getting it to them, trying to help them with their legislative work.”
Although this has changed in the past few years due to state tobacco control coalitions losing
significant funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJ). Fisher explained some of
the changes when he said:
RWJ pulled out, that money was one of the best things they ever did…because it
established an infrastructure that their sole responsibility was to work on tobacco…So
we’ve sort of reverted back to the situation before SmokeLess States, where we’re
working with the three big voluntaries.
In terms of issues management, conflict does occur between partners. A specific
example is on legislation that empowered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate
tobacco. In an article from the New York Times, conflict demonstrated between Dr. Stanton
Glanz, a respected researcher on tobacco control, and CTFK on the position of compromising on
provisions within the FDA regulations (Wilson, 2009). Novelli specifically mentioned how the
public health community split over the first attempt to pass FDA regulation in 1996, over the
issue of compromising with the tobacco industry, with CTFK being willing to develop
compromises and consensus to get a bill passed and other groups not willing to compromise.
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