Alma Adams Scholarship: Rewarding student action to make tobacco a thing of the past

Putting an end to tobacco use depends on young people who are eager to help achieve a tobacco-free generation.

Over the past decade, the Dr. Alma S. Adams Scholarship for Outreach and Health Communications to Reduce Tobacco Use Among Priority Populations has recognized students for their commitment to community service and use of the creative arts to raise awareness of tobacco’s harmful impacts in disproportionately affected communities.

Past winner, Jacob Hojnacki, previously served as an asthma educator at schools in low-income communities in Chicago. He taught more than 1,300 asthmatic children about the dangers and effects of tobacco use, the importance of being smoke-free and avoiding secondhand smoke.

“My experience working with asthmatic children and tobacco control in Chicago introduced me to environmental health, particularly how chemicals that we are exposed to in our environment affect our health outcomes,” said Hojnacki, now a first-year graduate student at Emory University pursuing a Master’s of Public Health. “Winning the scholarship has strengthened my belief in environmental justice and has further motivated me to work to improve the health of underserved communities.”

Here’s more of what Hojnacki and other past winners had to say about the Alma S. Adams Scholarship:

The scholarship program is named after Dr. Alma S. Adams, a founding board member of Truth Initiative who is now serving as a member of Congress representing North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District. Dr. Adams’ public service to North Carolina began with her election to the Greensboro City School Board in the 1980s when she became the first African-American woman ever elected to the board. She also taught art history for four decades at Bennett College, a historically black liberal arts college in Greensboro.

Applications are currently closed. For more information, email [email protected].