Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment, Advocacy and Leadership (APPEAL)

Since our inception in 1994, Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment, Advocacy and Leadership (APPEAL) has pioneered the building and facilitating of a national movement on tobacco, cancer, chronic diseases, and health equity for Asian American (AA) and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NH/PI) communities. Our mission is to achieve equity and empowerment for all marginalized communities by supporting and mobilizing community-led movements through advocacy and leadership development on critical public health issues.

As a national health justice organization, APPEAL has played a major role in advancing health equity and shaping national and state commercial tobacco policy for NH/PI and AA communities throughout the U.S. and Pacific. As the leading national organization addressing AA and NH/PI commercial tobacco control and tobacco-related health disparities, we have launched major advocacy campaigns and empowered communities to counteract the predatory marketing of deadly tobacco products by the tobacco industry and address commercial tobacco as the single most preventable cause of death for all groups

For over 30 years of experience, APPEAL has served as a national center of excellence on tobacco, chronic diseases, and health equity for our diverse communities. We have recognized that NH/PI communities require their own resources and programs (separate from Asian American) to adequately address health inequities.

APPEAL has created successful models for addressing health disparities including the APPEAL Community Readiness Model, the APPEAL Leadership Model and the APPEAL 4-Prong Policy Change Model. Furthermore, these models while created initially for AAs and NH/PIs, have also been successfully adapted for other racial communities and priority populations.

APPEAL’s Leadership Programs have trained more than 1500 community leaders in the U.S. and Pacific Islands to advocate for health justice and policy change. One of the best examples of APPEAL’s Leadership Model has been the nationally recognized LAAMPP Leadership Institute in Minnesota for 6 priority population groups (e.g. Asian Americans, African Americans, American Indians, Latinos, LGBTs and Pacific Islanders). The LAAMPP Institute has effectively developed leadership and policy skills of individual fellows but also successfully impacted tobacco control policies including smoke-free Hmongtown Market, smoke-free foster care policies in Ramsey County and Minnesota’s statewide tobacco tax in 2013. The ripple effect of APPEAL’s Leadership Programs has had tremendous impact across all levels including on the individual, community, systems and cross-cultural levels.