The Government of Turkey today announced that substantially fewer Turkish adult citizens smoked cigarettes in 2012 versus 2008. In its announcement, the Turkish government cited results from its second round of the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS). The survey showed that 14.8 million people or 27.1 percent of the Turkish population indicated that they smoked in 2012 versus 16 million people or 31.2 percent of the population in 2008. This work was made possible by a grant to the CDC Foundation from Bloomberg Philanthropies as part of the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use.

Charles Stokes, CDC Foundation president and CEO, in a ceremony last evening received the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 2013 Health-Care Hero Lifetime Achievement Award for his work helping the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advance its life-saving 24/7 work through public-private partnerships.