Have you heard the phrase, “An organization is only as good as its people?”

It’s true that the passionate and dedicated agency staff of California’s tobacco prevention projects are what drive the success of these programs. However, when these team members move on to new projects, jobs, or life paths, what happens to the program’s progress?

Many project directors and new agency staff can tell you—it’s difficult to continually start from square one! Staff turnover is a common challenge for both local lead agencies and competitive grantees working in tobacco prevention. 

Here at TCEC, we often get questions about writing up results in reports. And most of these questions center around that pesky word: Requirements.

What am I required to do?

What are we required to include?

And of course this makes sense, as we all have deliverables we are bound to submit. (For more guidance on reporting requirements, see TCEC's page on Reporting Results.)

Daylight saving time is coming to a close here in California. When we were younger, my brother would call POP-CORN, which was a phone service that you could call and hear the correct time. Did you ever do that? He would call POP-CORN right before the time change, and the automated message would answer, “At the tone, Pacific Daylight Time will be…1:59 and 50 seconds.” Then 10 seconds later the chime would say, “Pacific Standard Time will be 1:00 exactly.”  

The 2024 Olympics may be starting in a few weeks, but California’s Local Lead Agencies (LLAs) have been racing against the clock to complete their ECTC Data Collection in time. We are excited to declare that LLAs medaled in all four events— stores, parks, sidewalks, and MUH! 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not a new concept; if you’ve ever used a program that checks your spelling and grammar, you’ve used a form of AI! However, the release of products like ChatGPT has kicked off a boom in AI technology, and it is growing more sophisticated every day. 

So how does this AI boom affect our work in tobacco control evaluation? I took a deep dive into the topic to find out!

Once an intervention or evaluation activity is over, it can be important for those involved (project staff and volunteers) to reflect on what happened and discuss what worked, where there is room for improvement, and what any next steps should be. (See documenting organizational history.) Depending on how complex the activity was, this process could be fairly quick – anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or two.

I joined TCEC in March of 2013, and here I am in April 2024 writing a newsletter article looking back at my 11 years with TCEC. It is a challenge to come up with a summary that does the time I have spent with TCEC justice. I don’t say that as a boast of myself, but I have been part of an amazing team that has managed to do so much. I have had the great fortune of working with great people, to work with a team that made my time at TCEC feel less like work, and more like a group of friends tossing ideas and coming up with creative content.

It is an exciting time in the public health world!  State and local policymakers are taking action to reduce the availability of the tobacco industry’s deadly products in the retail environment.

What's the point of giving feedback, anyway? Will my comments actually change anything? 

If you've interacted with the Tobacco Control Evaluation Center at any point, you've undoubtedly received requests for feedback— whether on a training, a webinar, or how satisfied you were with our technical assistance.

When you need to collect data, how do you know what’s important to ask? Do you brainstorm a list of questions? Or do you dust off an instrument your project has used in the past? If you wonder about that, the Tobacco Control Evaluation Center (TCEC) has an array of tools that can help!