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GASP opens up business in the USA

With help from the Passport to Export scheme (UKTI), Cecilia Farren, Director of GASP, took a trip across the pond in April 2009 to meet with new and existing customers in the USA. With a strong dollar, it seemed an ideal opportunity to promote GASP products to the large US market for health education products.

In the words of Woody Guthrie’s song, the trip took Cecilia,
“From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters …”.

The Tobacco Education Clearinghouse of California (TECC) in a small but beautiful town of Scott’s Valley near Santa Cruz was the first port of call. TECC is based within ETR a not for profit company that receives funding from the state to provide resources to the many and varied community tobacco prevention projects in California. GASP is planning to offer a selection of TECC products 2010 and hopefully vice versa. Then it was off to San Francisco University to deliver a workshop to public health students of Professor Ruth Malone (also editor of BMJ Tobacco Control Journal) on UK tobacco control advocacy.

The ‘Gulf stream waters’ came in the form of Houston and Waco. Texas lived up to its ‘larger than life’ reputation and Cecilia was treated to wonderful hospitality and generosity. Debbie Melecio, the Tobacco Prevention and Tobacco Control coordinator for Houston arranged an action packed 24 hours with a local coalition meeting, sharing project ideas and a visit to the health department as well as a tour of Houston in her ‘head turning’ sports car, a Tex Mex meal and the biggest and best slice of cheesecake ever!

Waco, more famous for Dr Pepper drink and a massacre, is also home to Health Edco, a division of WRS company. GASP has distributed their products for many years and recently Health Edco has started to sell GASP products. It was great to meet the staff and visit the offices, workshops and warehouse of the company that GASP has had a long and productive relationship with. The inclusion of more of each other’s products is planned for respective GASP and Health Edco 2010 catalogues.

The trip ended on the east coast with visits to the Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In Harrisburg, state capital of Pennsylvania, Cecilia met with Judy Ochs and team from the Pennsylvania Tobacco Prevention and Control Program and Joy Blankley Meyer from PACT (Penn Alliance on Tobacco Control). With tobacco settlement money many states including Pennsylvania have made enormous strides in tobacco control. But money from this source is being diverted to other areas and priorities had to be made. The last call was to the New Jersey Comprehensive Tobacco Control Program in Trenton. The cut in funding from the settlement money was even greater here. Unlike the UK where we have the NHS providing stop smoking services and tobacco control alliances, in the US community organisations and local service providers bid for tobacco control funding for local projects. New Jersey was looking hard at cost-effectiveness.

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