It's About A Billion Lives 2025 Symposium Recap
On Friday, April 11th, 2025, the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education and the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center welcomed over 350 attendees to the 19th annual It’s About a Billion Lives Symposium. The full-day event brought together leading voices in tobacco control and archival work for a dynamic program of keynote talks, research presentations, and an engaging poster session.
This year’s symposium spotlighted two themes: the urgent need to eliminate menthol to reduce health disparities in African American communities, and the growing role of archives and storytelling in shaping public health narratives. Highlights included keynote presentations by Robert Proctor, PhD, Valerie Yerger, ND, and Yolanda C. Richardson, JD, MPH, whose insights sparked conversations on menthol and evidence-based action. Afternoon sessions, including a discussion on the intersection of tobacco, marketing, and media by Robert K. Jackler, MD and Peter Kovacs, PhD, and a panel discussion on the importance of storytelling in harm reduction communities, engaged participants in important discussions on both how to use archival research to help amplify voices through community storytelling.
This year, we saw over 700 registrations and an almost 50% increase in attendees from 2024. Thanks to the hard work of the SCLC and CTCRE teams, our fantastic presenters, and attentive audience, we had an incredible time at this year’s It’s About a Billion Lives Symposium! We’re already looking forward to next year.
A recording of the Symposium will be available on the SCLC and CTCRE websites in the coming weeks.
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