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Oklahoma’s Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET) runs a community-facing initiative called Health Matters that aims to reduce tobacco use and prevent chronic disease across the state. The program matters now because local prevention efforts can lower long-term health costs and strengthen community resilience as public health priorities shift after the pandemic.
What Health Matters does
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Health Matters supports community-led projects that promote healthier behaviors and safer environments. Rather than delivering a single statewide campaign, the program emphasizes local partnerships, offering funding, training and technical assistance so towns, school districts and health organizations can design interventions that fit their neighborhoods.
Projects funded or supported through Health Matters typically focus on improving access to healthy food, increasing opportunities for physical activity, creating smoke-free spaces and strengthening prevention work in schools. These efforts are often paired with community engagement to ensure solutions reflect local needs and culture.
Why the approach matters today
Preventive public health strategies can reduce the burden of chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and lung disease—conditions that drive much of the state’s health spending. With policymakers paying closer attention to health system sustainability, community-level prevention programs like Health Matters offer a cost-effective path to long-term improvement.
At the same time, the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted health inequities and reinforced the value of local capacity. Communities that have invested in prevention and grassroots coordination are better positioned to respond to new challenges, from rising behavioral health needs to disruptions in care.
Examples of common activities
- Community grants for locally designed projects that expand parks, farmers markets or walking trails.
- School-based initiatives that promote nutrition education, active recess and tobacco-free campus policies.
- Policy supports helping cities adopt smoke-free ordinances or zoning that improves access to healthy food.
- Capacity building through training, evaluation assistance and partnership development for local public health staff and volunteers.
These activities are often combined: a town might upgrade a park and work with schools to create safe routes for students, while also pursuing a smoke-free ordinance—creating multiple health benefits from coordinated actions.
Implications for residents and local leaders
For residents, Health Matters-funded projects can mean more opportunities to be active, easier access to fresh food and cleaner public spaces. For local leaders, the program offers a mechanism to invest in prevention without shouldering the entire cost or technical burden.
However, success depends on sustained engagement. Grants and pilot programs can jump-start change, but lasting impact typically requires local policy changes, ongoing funding streams and measurement to track what works.
How communities typically get involved
Engagement usually begins with a local assessment of needs and assets, followed by partnership-building among municipal officials, schools, health organizations and community groups. Many communities pursue seed grants to prove concepts and then scale effective practices through broader policy or private-public partnerships.
Strong proposals commonly include measurable goals, plans for community outreach and a strategy for maintaining benefits after initial funding ends.
As Oklahoma continues to address persistent health challenges, Health Matters represents a targeted, community-centered model for prevention. Its long-term value will hinge on whether local projects translate into sustained policy change and demonstrable improvements in population health.
