Looking forward to camp is such a vividly familiar and nostalgic feeling that I haven’t had since middle school. And it’s definitely not one I thought I would ever feel again…especially in any professional capacity or in the context of tobacco prevention. But as I was preparing my presentation for the California Youth Advocacy Network (CYAN) Statewide Youth Advocacy Conference (SYAC) this past July, there it was again: that unmistakable excitement and anticipation of getting ready to go to camp.
In April, I attended the 2026 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in Los Angeles. This year’s theme was “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Education Research.” I was lucky to present two of my own research papers and attend sessions on a wide range of topics. I came home with a few ideas about how we think about our work in tobacco prevention and evaluation.
Accessibility is something we typically talk about in the context of buildings, transportation, and public spaces, but it applies just as much to the documents and digital materials we produce every day.
Even in years not dominated by a global pandemic, our plans do not always go the way we’d like.
In tobacco control, that might look like a key decision maker opposing a policy we’d hoped to pass, or a survey failing to yield helpful data. Sometimes the plans that need to change are our literal evaluation plans. And sometimes the events we look forward to attending all year pivot completely.
In recent years the term “non-traditional” partners has been used in public health and by the California Tobacco Control Program. The idea is to invite voices to join us that may not be obvious allies to tobacco control.
You may wonder, why the push? Why now? How does this benefit my project?
California is an amazing place, with a population as diverse as our geography. To have true equity we must all be able to thrive, so let us continue to be bold, persistent, and undeterred by constraints in our evaluation work.
The theme of this year's meeting was Elevating Equity: Strategies & Partnerships to End Tobacco by 2035. Two of our Evaluation Associates share their takeaways.
