Profile: Khoa Ma, Cincinnati, OH

Khoa recently took the lead in working with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Asian American Youth Against Tobacco (AAYAT) and Ohio's stand campaign to coordinate anti-tobacco activism and outreach events at the kick off to the Aggressive Skaters Mobile Skate Park Series in Cincinnati, OH over Memorial Day weekend.

Khoa is the Campaign's 2004 East Regional Youth Advocate of the Year and is the president of the Cincinnati chapter of Asian American Youth Against Tobacco (AAYAT). He is a member of stand, Ohio?s statewide youth anti-tobacco coalition, and sits on stand?s youth advisory panel. He also serves as the vice president of recruitment for Ignite, a national youth-led movement working towards a nation where public officials serve the interest of the public and not that of the tobacco industry.

Khoa is a founding member of the Cincinnati chapter of AAYAT and has helped build a strong partnership between AAYAT and stand. He has served as a spokesperson for both organizations. Through his role in AAYAT, Khoa has worked closely with the Vietnamese community in Cincinnati. He has encouraged the Vietnamese Association to require that all events they sponsor be smoke-free and is awaiting a vote on this new policy.

Khoa also worked with stand members across Ohio to gather more than 8,000 petitions urging MTV to stop glamorizing tobacco use in its videos and programming. He was one of 52 youth from stand who traveled to MTV headquarters in New York to deliver these petitions and helped film a documentary of the project.

Khoa is playing an active role in a new campaign to make Cincinnati workplaces 100 percent smoke-free. He is recruiting youth advocates from both AAYAT and stand to help build support for this effort. He also plans to help translate and produce educational materials in Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese to make them more accessible to members of the Asian community.

Interested in learning more about AAYAT or stand?

Visit www.aayat.org and www.standonline.org.