October 31, 2025
Global Action Community Newsletter
We’re dedicated to ending the global smoking epidemic—the leading cause of preventable death—by focusing on overlooked populations.
We center people who smoke in our conversations because often they’re left out of bigger public health discussions. But tobacco impacts more than global health. For many, it makes up their livelihoods.
We recognize that as demand for cigarettes decreases, smallholder farmers who produce tobacco crops may suffer economically. In Malawi, a country in Africa, tobacco represents a significant portion of the country’s gross domestic product and roughly half of its exports.
Through the work of our affiliate, the Agricultural Transformation Initiative, and many of our grantees, we took action to empower these farmers at the local and national levels to diversify their crops to make them economically and environmentally sustainable.
This month, I had the pleasure of leading the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Global Action Agricultural Transformation Centre in Malawi—a state-of-the-art facility complete with labs for soil and food analysis, collaborative meeting spaces for peer-to-peer learning, and lecture rooms to disseminate new findings in agricultural best practices. We formally gifted the GA Centre to the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, which was a natural choice to ensure our legacy carries on for years to come.
But research shows that the opposite is true: When older people try to quit, they often succeed. A large study of people over 55 years old in the U.S. found that more than half of those alive at the end of the 20-year study period had successfully quit smoking for at least 2 years. Another study found that even older adults with a low motivation to quit did so successfully more than twice as often as younger adults with low motivation to quit.
It is imperative that we support older adults who smoke—especially those who come from places where smoking is common. Estimates suggest that by 2050, more than 70% of the world’s dementia cases will occur in people who live in low- and middle-income countries. These countries also have the highest rates of smoking. In order to ease the potential burden of dementia, we must support individuals in these spaces to quit using any means possible, whether with traditional nicotine replacement therapies or by switching to reduced-risk nicotine products.
It’s never too late for someone to stop smoking. Even if a person has started to experience health problems from smoking, there are often benefits to quitting, such as better response to treatments, being more likely to recover, and improved quality of life. We have an opportunity to reach out to this group with cessation support, which could potentially add years to their lives shared with loved ones.
Even before the GA Centre’s completion, our grantees developed programs and initiatives to foster new education in agricultural best practices. Already, we’ve directly impacted more than 100,000 smallholder farmers and indirectly supported more than 800,000. Many of these farmers already have reported increased yields and incomes as they switched to crops such as soybeans, groundnuts, bananas, and sunflowers.
Our grantees also have been hard at work beyond the Centre. For example, a team at Michigan State University led the development of the Malawi Agricultural Policy Advancement and Transformation Agenda, a think tank that works closely with the Malawian government to develop evolving policies to support agricultural transformation. Additionally, we’ve supported scholarships for master’s and PhD students to learn more about both agriculture and business, many of whom have become entrepreneurs in this space.
The GA Centre is just one example of how we are ensuring no one gets left behind as we work together to end smoking.
All my best,
Pamela Parizek
Executive Board Chair
Global Action to End Smoking
By the numbers
global action answers your questions
How can I quit smoking when I’ve been doing it for more than a decade?
As a place to start, rather than looking at quitting as one big goal, it may be better to break it down into several smaller parts.
Our bodies can become used to the stimulant nicotine, which is found in tobacco. But also, our minds can develop an association with smoking with certain situations, like being stressed or socializing. Thinking about when and where you smoke most often can help you come up with strategies that help you tackle each situation.
One strategy to overcome the physical addiction to nicotine is to replace the nicotine in cigarettes with nicotine in less-risky products. These products include nicotine replacement therapies, like nicotine gum or patches. However, if these don’t work for you, you can also consider reduced-risk nicotine products, like authorized e-cigarettes or nicotine pouches. These products will all deliver the nicotine your body craves without many of the dangerous chemicals found in combustible cigarettes.
Very few people wake up one day and just stop. For most of us, it is a process. The key to becoming a non-smoker is to keep trying, even if you experience a setback.
Learn more about all the ways you can quit here
get to know our grantees
Thank you for your support
Global Action is proud to take bold action to find global solutions to end death and disease caused by tobacco, particularly combustible cigarettes. We are one of the only public health groups to embrace tobacco harm reduction as a means of meeting adults who smoke where they are, showing them empathy and respect in their individual cessation journeys, and helping them—if they cannot or will not quit—to reduce their risks of death or disease from combustible cigarettes.
Your support increases the impact our grantees’ work can have on this cause. Together, we can build a future where no one suffers from tobacco-related disease.
Thank you for your support in the fight against smoking.
Get to Know Global Action
Global Action has awarded more than 175 grants to institutions that support the work of over 100 scientists, covering 46 countries on four continents.
Our organization is an independent, U.S. nonprofit 501(c)(3) grantmaking organization whose mission is to end combustible tobacco use, which remains the leading preventable cause of death globally. Through September 2023, Global Action received charitable gifts from PMI Global Services Inc. Global Action does not seek or accept funding from companies that produce tobacco or non-medicinal nicotine products.
To learn more about our work, visit our website.
Disclaimer: This newsletter does not provide medical advice. The information, including but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material contained in this newsletter are for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical advice or professional services. No material in this newsletter is intended to be a substitute for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. Those seeking personal medical advice should consult with a licensed physician or other qualified health care provider. Always seek the advice of your licensed physician or other qualified health care provider regarding a medical condition or with any questions you may have regarding treatment and before undertaking a new health care regimen. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you read in this newsletter. No physician-patient relationship is created by this newsletter. Global Action doesn’t make representations, express or implied, with respect to the information provided here.