Breathe California

As the local lung health leader, Breathe California of the Bay Area fights lung disease in all its forms and works with its communities to promote lung health. We envision a world that promotes healthy lungs and a healthy environment. We believe in leadership through passion, integrity, excellence, accountability, and fiscal/social responsibility. We were the first organization in the US to push for multiple ordinances to protect “nonsmokers rights,” winning the first such ordinances in Los Altos and Santa Clara County in the 1970s, and we continued city by city promoting multiple “rounds” of increasingly stringent ordinances. We have now turned to seeking protection from outdoor smoking, such as the landmark San Jose parks ordinance, and multi-unit housing protection such as the landmark Santa Clara County ordinance. In 1988 we turned in more voluntary signatures than any other local agency for Proposition 99, and we continue to support initiatives to raise tobacco taxes, license tobacco, and prevent youth access. In the 1990s we added new programs in multiple areas: EPA’s IAQ Tools for Schools inspections/remediation of respiratory hazards in schools, asthma management classes in schools, Quit the Hits cessation program for highest-risk students, Project Unity anti-tobacco program for African Americans, Mind the Gap College Advocacy program, Drive-through Flu Clinics, and Smokeless Saturday School for minors cited for tobacco possession and their parents. This last decade has brought Seniors Breathe Easy services, home inspections, provision of sleep apnea equipment, Youth for a Cool Earth environmental program, Community Connections tobacco control program for priority populations, the coordination of the Silicon Valley Clean Cities Coalition for promotion of alternatively fueled vehicles, …and the founding of the Tuberculosis Prevention Partnership…coming full circle from our beginning. Over the decades it has become more and more clear that we accomplish the greatest good, the most efficiently, at the least cost, when we work in partnership with other organizations. Although we are highly visible in our community, delivering our own direct services, we have evolved into a highly collaborative agency that frequently provides the training and technical assistance for others who deliver direct services to reach our target populations.