The 25th anniversary of Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth and its impact on Southwest Virginia

Twenty-five years ago this year, the General Assembly established the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth (VFHY). The focus was simple: to empower the commonwealth’s youth to make healthy choices utilizing a small portion of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with the major tobacco companies.

Through classroom- and community-based programming, grants, and proactive outreach, VFHY has remained focused on four key areas: reducing tobacco use, reducing childhood obesity, curbing substance use and empowering youth to make their own informed decisions about the best ways to stay healthy.

I was honored to be named the executive director of this incredible organization 22 years ago, just a few years into VFHY’s existence. As a proud native of Scott County in Southwest Virginia, I was committed to working with my community to support VFHY’s incredible mission. And to do it all as responsible, ethical stewards of taxpayer dollars.

With all this in mind, I was clear eyed about the many challenges and opportunities we faced.

And face them we have.

Since 2001, we have seen the statewide high school cigarette smoking rate decrease from 28.6% to 2%. As of 2021 in Southwest Virginia, the rate was down to 4.6%.

Over the past 25 years, VFHY has awarded $100 million in programmatic funding to communities across the commonwealth to help prevent and reduce youth tobacco, nicotine, and vaping product use and childhood obesity.

In Southwest Virginia alone, we have awarded more than 300 grants, totaling more than $25 million.

Meanwhile, our Youth Development grants support evidence-based classroom programs that provide education to about 40,000 kids each year on how to stop or never start using tobacco or tobacco-related products.

That includes 12,000 children in Southwest Virginia each year.

And through it all, we have proudly worked with our community partners to remain responsible stewards of public dollars, ensuring that funds we receive are reinvested back into our communities, including those in Southwest Virginia.

We are proud of what we have accomplished as a collaborative organization that works with Virginia’s diverse communities in order to serve our youth.

But we recognize there is more work to do.

Nowhere is that more evident than with the ongoing opioid epidemic, and its continued, tragic impact on all areas of the commonwealth, perhaps most notably in Southwest Virginia.

As the Virginia Rural Health Plan 2022-2026 notes in its discussion of needs and local organizations offering solutions:

“Southwest Virginia has experienced a higher rate of substance abuse compared to the rest of the Commonwealth in recent years … Southwest Virginia has a history of drug misuse, lack of available care for substance abuse disorder, and stigma towards those who use drugs.”

That’s why, even as VFHY continues our efforts to keep tobacco use amongst youth at historic lows, we are also expanding our outreach and partnerships to address the opioid crisis and the rise in fentanyl use amongst young Virginians.

As a part of this work, earlier this year, VFHY joined first lady Suzanne Youngkin, Attorney General Jason Miyares, the Virginia Department of Health’s Office of Health and Human Resources, and local partners in Roanoke to outline a new campaign designed to educate people about the dangers of fentanyl and offer effective, easily-accessible prevention resources.

VFHY also remains committed to confronting childhood obesity and empowering kids to make healthy choices. That’s why just last year, in addition to our long-term efforts , we partnered with the national nonprofit Kaboom! to build playspaces in communities across the commonwealth who need them.

We completed two new playspaces in the Southwest region last year.

This collaboration not only gives children the opportunity to play in a safe environment, but also addresses the lack of available playground equipment that far too many children experience and far too many adults take for granted. VFHY is proud to help expand access to quality playspaces for the commonwealth’s children.

We’ve also secured several significant wins assisting localities to improve outdoor spaces. By working alongside youth leaders in Y Street and their Share the Air campaign, we’ve helped change local statutes in both Martinsville and Franklin County to ensure outdoor spaces are smoke-free, vapor-free, tobacco-free and remain safe and healthy for kids.

We’ve learned a lot over the past 25 years. We’ve forged lasting partnerships with organizations, local leaders, and communities, and have witnessed firsthand how these issues, from preventing youth tobacco use and obesity to substance use and youth empowerment, intersect and overlap. We’ve learned and adopted the best practices needed to confront these challenges, remained dedicated to the efficient, effective use of public funds, and found inspiration in the most unlikely of places.

As we look to the future, VFHY will continue to responsibly diversify funding sources and expand cutting-edge prevention programming that empowers Virginia’s youth to make healthy choices.

I’m honored to be the executive director of VFHY. I’m proud to be a native of Southwest Virginia. And I can’t wait to see what we accomplish together over the next 25 years.

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