Oklahoma Christian University alumna Michelle Stephens was recently named Vice Chair of the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET) Board of Directors.
“We were the first state in the union to put together a trust to take this money from Big Tobacco and put it in an endowment trust to promote health and decrease smoking rates,” Stephens said. “We were in the 20 percent range, and now we’re down to a 19 percent smoking rate. [The change] is pretty significant.”
Stephens said she got involved with the department after being appointed by the governor.
“A few years back, I was appointed by the governor to serve on the board,” Stephens said. “I had always been very interested in youth and education, along with healthy living. They needed someone from District Three, and I’ve been on there for three years now.”
Stephens was promoted to Vice Chair when the previous chairman, Don Millican, stepped down and retired.
“Chairman Millican, who is also an Oklahoma Christian Board of Trustees member, stepped off, then we elected a new chair, which was Dr. Benjamin, and they needed a Vice Chair, and someone had to do it,” Stephens said.
TSET runs numerous campaigns to help bring awareness to the tobacco “epidemic,” as well as help people who are struggling to quit smoking.
“The general population probably knows us for three different campaigns,” Stephens said. “We have the ‘Tobacco Stops with Me,’ where we focus on the dangers of smoking, not only to the person who is smoking but also all the secondhand smoke. Then we have the ‘Tobacco Helpline.’ They provide smoking cessation for the groups of people that need it. Then we have ‘Shape Your Future,’ which helps with statewide obesity.”
According to Stephens, the causes do not stop with tobacco. Vaping and e-cigs have become a vice among youth in America, and prominently in Oklahoma, and Stephens said TSET is trying to change the script.
“Kids are getting a lot of education on how bad drugs are but not so much on the smoking or vaping side of things,” Stephens said. “I think our next real health crisis is going to be with youth and vaping. What I find concerning is many parents—and this is just anecdotal, this is not researched—are not seeing it as harmful, while many parents feel cigarette smoking is harmful.”
Stephens also said kids as young as elementary age have access to vapes and Juuls.
“I have been made aware that early elementary kids have access to vapes at school,” Stephens said. “We had a meeting a couple months ago, and the lead researcher in tobacco was telling us that one vape has the same amount of nicotine as four cigarettes. Nicotine affects brain development until someone is 25 years old. So, we have a lot of kids get addicted to nicotine, which is going to be harmful to them.”
Stephens said she credits much of where she is now to Oklahoma Christian preparing her for the professional world.
“I love Oklahoma Christian’s emphasis on a liberal arts education,” Stephens said. “Even though my degree was a business degree, and I was planning on going to law school with that, we were exposed to lots of different ideas, topics and subjects. Within our education, it was really expected that we would serve and do things outside of [school] in our jobs. And when I was going there, they really encouraged healthy living, exercising and that kind of thing, as well as having clear lines as to what you should put in your body and what you should not.”
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