Dr. Bruce Benjamin, chair of the TSET Board of Directors
Twenty years ago, Oklahoma voters created TSET to protect and invest money paid to the state by Big Tobacco as part of a settlement over the harm their deadly products inflicted on our citizens. TSET’s work and the focus of the Board of Directors is to support programs that improve the health of Oklahomans. It is gratifying that Oklahoma voters recognize and approve of those efforts.
Oklahoma faces many health challenges, and a focus on prevention—helping our fellow Oklahomans live healthier lives—is the most efficient and cost-effective way to confront those challenges. The TSET Board of Directors is proud of the agency’s work to saves lives, improve well-being and save real dollars for the state of Oklahoma and its citizens. We look forward to supporting that work for decades to come.
Thomas Larson, TSET Director of Public Information and Outreach
In 2000, Oklahoma voters created TSET with the constitutional mandate to support programs and services to improve the health of Oklahomans. Once again, voters have again endorsed TSET’s work as the nation’s only constitutional trust that uses lawsuit settlement money from Big Tobacco to improve the health of our citizens.
TSET remains committed to fulfilling that constitutional mandate by addressing Oklahoma’s leading causes of death—tobacco use and obesity—as well as funding life-saving cancer research, placing physicians in rural Oklahoma and supporting health initiatives in communities and schools across our state.
Much work remains to be done and earnings from the TSET endowment will continue support initiatives that have the greatest impact on the health of our residents and create opportunities to help Oklahomans live longer, healthier lives.