CAMY Gets New Life with $4 Million CDC Grant

Monitoring of alcohol-industry advertising and its effects on youth will continue for at least the next five years thanks to a $4 million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY).

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health announced on August 12 that CAMY received the CDC grant after relocating to the school from Georgetown University, where it was founded in 2002. Previously, CAMY was funded by grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, but that money ran out in 2008.

“We are very pleased to be working with CAMY at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on monitoring youth exposure to alcohol marketing,” said Robert Brewer, M.D., head of the alcohol team at CDC. “We are confident this work, supported by both Congress and the Surgeon General, will help reduce youth exposure to alcohol marketing and thereby contribute to our collective efforts to prevent underage drinking.” 

The Sober Truth on Preventing Underage Drinking (STOP) Act, signed into law in 2006, requires the federal government to track the “rate of exposure of youth to advertising and other media messages encouraging and discouraging alcohol consumption.”

“Industry self-regulation is the primary way young people are protected from exposure to alcohol advertising,” said CAMY Executive Director David Jernigan, Ph.D. “By shining a bright and consistent light on alcohol advertising practices, CDC’s funding of ongoing monitoring of youth exposure helps to ensure that self-regulation is as effective as it can be.”