Advancing Science and Practice in the Retail Environment

ABOUT Our Center goal is to build a strong scientific evidence base for effective policies in the retail environment to help reduce tobacco use, tobacco-related disparities, and the public health burden of tobacco, including cancer. HISTORY OVERVIEW The Advancing Science Practice in the Retail Environment (ASPiRE) Center launched in 2018 with a five-year, $11.6 million grant from the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health to a partnership made up of Washington University in St. Louis, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Stanford University. The ASPiRE Center’s team-science approach builds on a strong, multidisciplinary collaboration that began in 2012 with funding from the National Cancer institute’s State Community Tobacco Control (SCTC) Research Initiative to address important, under-studied aspects of state and community tobacco control policy and media interventions. Slow-moving federal regulation and stalled statewide efforts to pass smoke-free and tax policies have led more states and communities to focus how and where tobacco products are sold to consumers. There are 27 tobacco retailers for every McDonald’s restaurant in the US. Easy access in stores contributes to myths about the popularity and danger of tobacco products and makes it harder to quit. ASPiRE highlights and studies issues around tobacco retailer density and its consequences, innovative retail tobacco control policies at the local level and their impact, and the public health burdens made worse by the pervasive availability of tobacco products across the US.