North American public health schools decline funding from tobacco funded foundation

The deans of 19 schools of public health from prominent universities in the US and Canada have signed a joint statement1 declining offers of research funding from the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW), an organisation set up with money from tobacco giant Philip Morris International.

The deans wrote that “both the tobacco industry and Philip Morris International have a long history of funding ‘research’ in ways meant to purposely confuse the public and advance their own interests, aggressively market cigarettes globally, including to children, and persist in their relentless opposition to evidence based tobacco control interventions.”

The World Health Organization has declined to work with FSFW, the deans noted, and they cite the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the world’s …