Who We Are
Formerly known as the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation, the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth was established by the Virginia General Assembly to lead statewide efforts to reduce and prevent youth tobacco use and childhood obesity.
In the Commonwealth of Virginia, about 9,300 kids under the age of 18 become new smokers each year. Established in 1999 by the General Assembly, our Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation (VTSF) division continues to prevent and reduce youth tobacco use through a multifaceted prevention approach. VTSF directly reaches more than 60,000 children across the Commonwealth each year with community based classroom programs, and it reaches hundreds of thousands more through its award-winning radio and TV ads and Web sites.
Also of concern to the health of children in Virginia is the growing childhood obesity epidemic nationwide. In Virginia alone, more than 30 percent of children and teens are considered overweight or obese. Our new Virginia Youth Obesity Prevention division will work to promote good nutrition and physical activity among the youth of Virginia.
Our History
In 1998, the Attorneys General of 46 states, including Virginia, signed the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) with the four largest tobacco manufacturers in the United States to settle state suits to recover costs associated with treating smoking-related illness. The spirit and intent of the MSA was to provide states with funding for tobacco use prevention programs that would ultimately lower the prevalence of tobacco use, thus lowering medical costs to care for citizens with tobacco-related diseases. According to the MSA, the tobacco manufacturers are projected to pay the settling states in excess of $200 billion over the next 25 years. Virginia is expected to receive $4 billion.
In 1999, the Virginia General Assembly established the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation and allocated 10% of the MSA funds to the VTSF to lead Virginia's youth tobacco use prevention efforts.
The Foundation is established for the purposes of determining the appropriate recipients of moneys...to assist in financing efforts to restrict the use of tobacco products by minors through such means as educational and awareness programs on the health effects of tobacco use on minors and enforcement of laws restricting the distribution of tobacco products to minors. (Section 32.1-355, Code of Virginia.)
VTSF promotes healthy living habits to children and teens in Virginia through a variety of methods, including: classroom programs; a multimedia youth marketing campaign; cutting-edge research; and funding enforcement of Virginia’s tobacco-access laws.
In 2008, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine announced that youth smoking rates had plummeted to the lowest point in a decade. An estimated 15.5 percent of Virginia high school students are now current cigarette smokers, compared to 20 percent nationally. Smoking among high school students within the state fell from 28.6 percent in 2001, to 15.5 percent in 2007, largely due to VTSF’s prevention work.
Because of VTSF’s great success at reducing youth tobacco use, reaching the youth of Virginia and helping kids learn to make positive, healthy lifestyle choices, the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously in 2009 to rename VTSF as the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth, adding childhood obesity prevention and reduction to our mission:
The Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth (VFHY) is hereby created as a body corporate and a political subdivision of the Commonwealth. … The Foundation shall have a division known as the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation (VTSF) to assist in financing efforts to restrict the use of tobacco products by minors through such means as educational and awareness programs on the health effects of tobacco use on minors and enforcement of laws restricting the distribution of tobacco products to minors. Additionally, a division of the Foundation known as Virginia Youth Obesity Prevention (VYOP) may use moneys from the Fund to assist in financing efforts to reduce childhood obesity through such means as educational and awareness programs, implementing evidence-based practices, and assisting schools and communities with policies and programs.
