Going tobacco-free on 24 New York City university campuses: A public health agency's partnership with a large urban public university system

ABSTRACT

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene partnered with the nation's largest university system, the City University of New York (CUNY), to provide technical assistance and resources to support the development and implementation of a system-wide tobacco-free policy. This effort formed one component of Healthy CUNY—a larger initiative to support health promotion and disease prevention across the university system and resulted in the successful introduction of a system-wide tobacco-free policy on all CUNY campuses. Glassman et al (J Am Coll Health. 2011;59:764–768) published a blueprint for action related to tobacco policies that informed our work. This paper describes the policy development and implementation process and presents lessons learned from the perspective of the Health Department, as a practical case study to inform and support other health departments who may be supporting colleges and universities to become tobacco-free.

KEYWORDS:

• Capacity building, college health, health department, health promotion, tobacco control

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States. As no individual-level data were reviewed for the writing of this paper, approval by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's Institutional Review Board was not required.

Acknowledgments

We thank Nick Freudenberg, DrPH (School of Public Health, CUNY and Luis Manzo, PhD (formerly of CUNY; now at St. John's University) for their assistance in the writing and review of this paper.

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.