About the Eliminate Tobacco Use (ETU) Initiative
Tobacco use is a major public health problem in Virginia and across the nation. It is one of the biggest risk factors for many chronic illnesses like heart and lung disease, high blood pressure, and many types of cancer.
The Eliminate Tobacco Use Initiative works to create tobacco-free cultures within institutions of higher education (colleges and universities) through policy, prevention, and cessation. To do this, ETU offers a variety of evidence-based strategies, including: 
- Tobacco-free campus policy adoption, implementation, and evaluation
- Education, prevention, and cessation health communication tools
- Guidelines and best practices to connect people who use tobacco and vape with cessation services
- Learning and peer networking via annual summit and quarterly webinars
- Producing annual impact report sharing best practices, initiative accomplishments, and future goals
ETU Virginia started after Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Massey Cancer Center attended the 2018 Texas Eliminate Tobacco Use Summit. VCU asked the University of Virginia Cancer Center to help them set up a similar meeting in Virginia. In spring of 2019, the first ETU Virginia summit was held with almost 100 people from 18 Virginia colleges and universities plus two out-of-state universities.
To learn more about the national Eliminate Tobacco Use Initiative, please visit their website at https://eliminatetobaccouse.org/.
Virginia's Higher Education Campuses Making Progress
The ETU Virginia Initiative has been working closely with Virginia institutions of higher education to improve their campus tobacco policies. As of April 2024, 49 colleges and universities received a tobacco policy report card from ETU Virginia. The grades show how well each institution of higher education is doing with their tobacco policies. Institutes of higher education can compare their grades with those of other colleges or universities. The report cards can also help spread awareness about tobacco policies among colleges and universities in Virginia, including those that are tobacco and smoke-free. Virginia has the opportunity to continue increasing the percentage of campuses that are tobacco free. As of 2022, Virginia ranked second to last among all states.