San Francisco’s Tobacco Free Project (TFP) is part of a statewide campaign to reduce commercial tobacco use, with a special focus on those most communities most targeted by the Tobacco Industry. TFP needed to facilitate a community engagement process, dubbed “Communities of Excellence” (CX), that would inform their 2022-2025 work to reduce commercial tobacco-related health disparities in San Francisco. The CX process brought together a wide range of stakeholders to discuss and prioritize local commercial tobacco prevenion issues, including public health professionals, academics, leaders from community-based organizations, and community members.
Over the course of six months, Facente Consulting collaborated with TFP, co-chairs of the San Francisco Tobacco Free Coalition, and Bright Research Group to plan and implement four virtual community engagement sessions centered around key areas of commercial tobacco prevention. Facente Consulting facilitated all virtual sessions, with our key roles including guiding discussion around key topics and designing an interactive prioritization process to help stakeholders communicate the issues they found most important. Priority commercial tobacco control areas that emerged from the CX process included youth engagement, smoke-free multi-unit housing policies, cessation support services, and policies setting minimum retail prices, package sizes, and volume sizes for commercial tobacco products. These findings helped TFP gain valuable insights into how to structure their future commercial tobacco prevention work to promote health equity.