An AmeriStop Food Mart in Huber Heights, Ohio. Retailers in a Montgomery County program agree to limit advertising.
Image courtesy Google Street View
When Taniayah O'Quinn-Sims walks into corner stores in Montgomery County, Ohio, her pitch to owners and managers may sound confusing. She tells them that if they will reduce advertising and other in-store promotion of tobacco, alcohol and lottery products, the county will give them money.
“Some of them didn't really believe me,” O'Quinn-Sims, a program coordinator at the Montgomery County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board, told The Nation's Health.
The offer is real. Retailers Creating a Responsible Environment, or Retailers CARE, pays small neighborhood stores to voluntarily pull back on promotion of potentially health-harming products.
The program is grounded in findings on marketing disparities in the community, which includes the county seat of Dayton and portions of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Volunteers with the Montgomery County Prevention Coalition visited more than 300 local convenience stores and logged cigarette ads, beer signs and lottery products on display. They found promotion was heaviest in low-income communities of color.
Armed with those findings, the county board, which manages the coalition's funding, approved a pilot program. Twenty-eight county stores were invited to participate, all in neighborhoods with poor health indicators.
Seven retailers agreed to join the program. The county equipped them with ID scanners, locking glass cases for tobacco products and gambling help signage.
The retailers committed to following Retailers CARE's incentive plan for two years. The plan has four tiers, requiring scanning of ID cards, keeping tobacco behind the counter or in a locked case, posting the Ohio Problem Gambling Helpline phone number and limiting window promotions to 20% of the glass. Stores achieving the lowest tier are paid $2,700 for store upgrades.
The highest tier includes all lower-level standards, as well as agreeing to end alcohol sales by midnight. Stores also adopt a drug- and smoke-free workplace policy and keep a naloxone kit on hand. Retailers participating in the highest tier can earn $7,200 for store upgrades. Retailers CARE organizers drop by stores unannounced to verify compliance.
After one year of the program, five stores reached the first tier and one store reached the third tier.
Retailers have spent their program earnings on structural repairs and lighting and counter upgrades, something regular customers noticed and were impressed by, O'Quinn-Sims said.
Corner convenience stores are mainstays in a community, and owners and managers often develop relationships with customers.
“You care about the people that you serve,” O'Quinn-Sims said. “Why not want to make a difference and do something to help with their health and safety?”
Some barriers have appeared during the pilot program. Recruitment was difficult, and independent owners were easier to recruit than retail chains. Funding was also a problem, limiting recruitment to three stores a year.
Counties interested in adopting the model should begin with researching potential locations and gathering local health data to document community need, O'Quinn-Sims said. Staff capacity must also be taken into account.
Researchers have not yet measured if Retailers CARE improves community health, but they are hoping to move the needle. A 2025 health assessment in the county of 540,000 residents showed lung cancer cases and deaths were much higher than the national average. Community leaders are working with partners, organizations and residents to target that and other health concerns.
“Programs like Retailers CARE recognize that there are many business owners who are eager to protect the health of the communities in which they themselves are members — especially when given the materials and compensation to do so,” O'Quinn-Sims and a colleague wrote in an article about the program in APHA's American Journal of Public Health in July.
For more information, visit www.retailerscare.com.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
