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Question 5. How can we most effectively interest and recruit the allies we need? |
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Once we have identified the allies we need, how do we engage them in our advocacy efforts? For each group we want to recruit, we ask a variation of our strategy-planning questions:
Who has the authority to decide the organization will become involved in tobacco control advocacy? What messages will move the organization's decision makers to act? What messengers can best influence the leaders of the organization? What are the most effective ways for our messengers to deliver our messages to the organization? What do we want?To get this organization to join our coalition or otherwise support our advocacy efforts. Who has the authority to decide the organization will become involved in tobacco control advocacy?Most groups have formal and informal leadership and decision-making structures. Doctors' organizations, such as medical societies, have an elected president and board of directors. They also usually have informal leaders—doctors who have been active and influential in society activities. An interested and motivated leader, or a small group of leaders, can sometimes persuade to our cause a whole organization that would otherwise be uninterested in tobacco control. In India, for example, the leader of the Jaipur tobacco control coalition personally knew and recruited the president of the automobile dealers' association. The entire association then became an active member of the coalition. Similarly, a motivated president of a students' association, or the elected head of a residents' association, can bring that group into active tobacco control advocacy. In the United States, the National Organization of Women (NOW) gratefully accepted tobacco-industry money for many years to support its activities—and remained silent on tobacco control issues. Finally, one NOW president expressed outrage at the organization's ties to an industry that exploited women. NOW formally chose to decline all tobacco-industry money, and shortly thereafter became active in tobacco control advocacy. Many national voluntary health associations and foundations restrict their activities to their traditional support area—research—until their leaders advocate internally for change. The American Cancer Society in the United States for years placed a low priority on advocacy efforts, including tobacco control—until determined new leadership brought about a fundamental shift. The Society then embraced tobacco control advocacy as a core cancer-control strategy. What messages will move the organization's decision makers to act?To persuade an organization to join our tobacco control alliance, we need to speak to the core interests of that organization. This means that a voluntary heart association needs to hear about tobacco's death toll from heart disease—not from cancer. We need to tell consumer groups about the tobacco industry's history of consumer fraud and deception, and about its long-standing influence over the governments of countries around the world. Student groups need to hear about the marketing tactics of the tobacco industry that manipulate and seduce young people. Women's groups need to hear how tobacco marketers use cigarettes as symbols of women's liberation—for commercial gain. Labor unions have often refused to join tobacco control efforts. Sometimes they are worried about tobacco workers' jobs. Sometimes they fear alienating union members who smoke. And sometimes they do not view tobacco use as a labor issue. We have seen that US labor unions took action when new local laws protected some workers from passive smoking but not others, such as restaurant and bar workers. The message that unprotected workers were the target of unfair discrimination motivated their unions to act. In Nigeria, Akinbode Olefumi's message that freedom from tobacco and tobacco-marketing deception was a human right gained the attention and support of human-rights groups. We can use research to persuade development and anti-poverty NGOs that many whose jobs are related to tobacco face dismal working situations and extremely low wages. Research on the plight of those who grow tobacco appears in the CTFK report Golden Leaf, Barren Harvest. Research on groups employed in tobacco appears in PATH Canada's report Tobacco and Poverty. Tobacco and Poverty and Hungry for Tobacco illustrate the point that tobacco employment and tobacco use further impoverish the poor. (You can find both reports at http://www.pathcanada.org/english/pathcan.htm.) Researchers in Vietnam are comparing expenditures by the poor on tobacco to their expenditures on other items, and looking how the money could be better spent. Basic public health messages will move some business leaders, as concerned citizens. But to engage business groups, you will need messages that speak to business interests. For example:
In Curbing the Epidemic: Governments and the Economics of Tobacco Control, the World Bank reports that "the economic fears that have deterred policymakers from taking action are largely unfounded. Policies that reduce the demand for tobacco, such as a decision to increase tobacco taxes, would not cause long-term job losses in the vast majority of countries. Nor would higher tobacco taxes reduce tax revenues; rather, revenues would climb in the medium term. Such policies could, in sum, bring unprecedented health benefits without harming economies." This publication is online at http://www1.worldbank.org/tobacco/reports.asp. Another sample message for business groups is this:
To encourage smoke-free workplaces around the world, US business owners—who were also American Cancer Society volunteers—wrote an open letter to Sri Lankan business leaders. They assured their Sri Lankan colleagues of the benefits of measures that make workplaces smoke-free. "We are American businessmen [and businesswomen]," they wrote. "We own or manage both local and national business enterprises [and] we want to assure you that tobacco control is both good for health and good for a nation's economy and business." "As employers," they went on, "we find that tobacco control efforts have produced real economic benefits for us. Our workplaces are now smoke-free. That brings us benefits in worker productivity, less time lost by workers smoking on the job, less worker sickness and absence from work. Our non-smoking employees enjoy the health benefits of smoke-free air." Business Leaders for a Smoke-Free New England, a program sponsored by the American Cancer Society, is based on the premise that "business leaders are in a unique position to affect a lot of people." Their website provides materials for developing smoke-free policies in the workplace, educational materials for employees and families, and information on how to find support services for employees who smoke and want to quit. You can find this program online at
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/COM/content/div_NE/COM_4_2x_ Here is another message that speaks to business interests:
Instead of supporting tobacco companies, business leaders need to recognize that the corrupt activities of these companies create distrust of all business. The wise course for ethical business leaders is to support tobacco controls and distance their businesses from the tobacco companies. It is in their interest to help isolate the tobacco companies as the pariahs they should be.
What messengers can best influence the leaders of the organization?The most effective messengers to persuade a group to join tobacco control advocacy efforts are trusted present and past leaders of the group, and others viewed as professional or social peers. In Sri Lanka, the Medical Society became an active tobacco control advocate through the persuasion of the country's leading psychiatrist. This individual is a former president of the medical society and current chair of its Health Promotion Committee. Business leaders who are personally committed to tobacco control, perhaps through personal tragedy, are most likely to persuade other businessmen and businesswomen. For example, a noted women's advocate can carry your message to a women's group; a labor leader can speak with other union leaders; and so on. Suppose such individuals are not available to serve as messengers. Then your strategy-planning group will need to identify individuals committed to tobacco control to whom leaders of the group you seek as an ally are likely to listen—based on who they are and what their status is, as well as their words. In the United States, advocates had little success convincing Hollywood screenwriters to stop romanticizing smokers in their films. The screenwriters did not want to hear messages from outsiders insensitive to their artistic freedom. Then they heard directly from Joe Eszterhas, who had written fourteen successful Hollywood movies, many of which featured characters that smoke. As a smoker, he believed that it was the right of every individual to smoke. His movies reflected this view. His opinion changed, however, when a lifetime of smoking resulted in cancer of the larynx. Eszterhas spent two years in and out of cancer wards. In a New York Times open letter, he appealed to his fellow screenwriters:
What are the most effective ways for our messengers to deliver our messages to the organization?To reach medical doctors, for example, the ACS/UICC guide suggests presenting our messages in media directed specifically to doctors:
To reach other groups successfully, ask such questions as:
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