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Rendez-vous with . . . Steven Schroeder, Past President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 

Steven Schroeder: I am a physician with training in internal medicine and public health and with a long interest in health policy. For most of my professional life I was in academic positions, first at Harvard, then at George Washington, and from 1976-1990 at the University of California, San Francisco. At UCSF, I was professor of medicine and founding chief of its Division of General Internal Medicine. From July 1990 until December 2002 I served as President of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey. I have now returned to UCSF to direct a new center . . .

It is hard to claim that RWJF's efforts in tobacco control crowded out other funders, since there were no private funders before we entered the field. Now ACS and Legacy are major players, and I hope that others will join. It would be a mistake to think of any funder "owning" a field, especially one as important as tobacco control. . .

My position at UCSF is as Distinguished Professor of Health and Health Care, as well as Director of a RWJF-supported Smoking Cessation Leadership Center. The Center is premised on the following: of the 46 million smokers in the US; one third will die of smoking if they don't quit; 70% would like to quit yet most cannot; their chances of quitting are increased if they are encouraged by a health professional; yet most health professionals do not help their patients to quit. We will be working with leaders of the health professions to encourage their constituents to do a better job as cessation advocates.

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