Core members of the Smokeless States: National Tobacco Policy Initiative include:
Frank Chaloupka (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Christina Ciecierski (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Pamela I. Clark (Batelle)
Katherine Clegg Smith (Johns Hopkins University)
Gary Giovino (University of Buffalo)
Lan Liang (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)
Anna Sandoval (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Carol Schmitt (RTI International)
Catherine Siebel (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Sandy Slater (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Fran Stillman (John Hopkins School of Public Health)
Cindy Tworek (Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation)
Frank Chaloupka, PhD
Dr. Chaloupka is Director of ImpacTeen and a PI on this project. He is a professor of economics in the department of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Business Administration and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research Health Economics Program. He received his doctorate in economics from the City University of New York Graduate School in 1988. Dr. Chaloupka’s research focuses on the economic analysis of substance use and abuse, primarily among youth and young adults. He has conducted extensive research on the effects of prices and substance control policies on the demands for tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs, and on related outcomes. Dr. Chaloupka has published over 25 articles in such journals as the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Journal of Health Economics, Economic Inquiry, Eastern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Journal, and Contemporary Economic Policy; and numerous book chapters and working papers.
Telephone: 312.413.2287
Email: [email protected]
Web: http://www.uic.edu/~fjc
Christina Ciecierski, PhD
Dr. Ciecierski is an assistant professor at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago and a research specialist at the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She received her doctorate degree in economics from UIC in 2001. Dr. Ciecierski’s research focuses on consumer health behaviors and the effects of various government interventions on the demands for tobacco and alcohol among American young adults. Most recently, she completed a technical report for the State of Illinois describing patterns of tobacco use and related outcomes for various subgroups of the state’s population. Dr. Ciecierski also has considerable experience working abroad. She has been involved in a number of international research collaborations led by the tobacco control units of the World Bank and World Health Organization. Here, Dr. Ciecierski’s work includes: cost-effectiveness analysis of tobacco control interventions and a “how to” manual for data analysis. More recently, she has focused on a number of issues pertaining to the economics of tobacco control in Poland such as the impact of rising tobacco excise taxes on cigarette use among adult Poles. Other ongoing work includes: an analysis of internet cigarette sales in Poland; the application of an new methodology for measuring the consumption of legal versus illegal cigarettes in Poland; monitoring pricing and promotional activities at points-of-purchase across Poland; and finally, measuring the effectiveness of population-based versus individual clinic-based anti-smoking initiatives in Poland.
Email: [email protected]
Pamela I. Clark, PhD
Dr. Clark is a senior health research scientist at Battelle Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation. She earned her doctorate in epidemiology at the University of South Florida. Prior to joining Battelle, she became an associate professor while teaching at medical schools in Florida and Ohio. Dr. Clark is a leading expert in community approaches to the prevention of youth risk behaviors, particularly in tobacco initiation, maintenance, and cessation by youth. She is now doing formative research on the role of social sources, such as friends, parents, other relatives, and strangers in the provision of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs to children, and is investigating the tobacco retail environment from supply-side and demand-side perspectives. Dr. Clark is the coauthor of two medical textbooks, has contributed chapters to three others, and has published more than 80 papers in medical and public health literature.
Telephone: 410.377.5660
Email:
Katherine Clegg Smith, PhD
Katherine Clegg Smith is a sociologist with research interests around the social determinants of health behavior. Dr. Smith’s particular area of expertise is the role played by the media (particularly the news media) in health knowledge and behavior, as well as the influence of the media in the health policy process. She also has a general interest in youth health behavior and the use of qualitative methodology in public health research.
Dr. Smith is currently leading a research project linking news coverage of tobacco to attitudes around policy change that is funded by the American Cancer Society. She is also working to apply the news monitoring strategies developed for tobacco to other public health topics. Dr. Smith was recently awarded a CDC mentored public health scientist award (K01) to study the role of the news media in the dissemination of knowledge on healthy diet.
Telephone: 410.502.0025
Email: [email protected]
Gary Giovino, PhD
Dr. Gary A. Giovino joined the faculty of the Department of Health Behavior in the SUNY at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions in September 2006. His research interests focus on patterns, determinants, consequences, and control of tobacco use; which are part of a more general focus on disease prevention and health promotion. Dr. Giovino earned his doctoral degree in Experimental Pathology (Epidemiology) at the University at Buffalo in 1987. In 1988, he joined the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he served as Chief of the Epidemiology Branch during most of the 1990s. In 1999 he became a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Health Behavior of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Dr. Giovino is a member of the New York State Tobacco Control Program Advisory Board. He is Principal Investigator of two Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)-funded studies; the first is a survey on national patterns of youth smoking cessation and the second is a national survey of US adult smokers to assess “hardcore” smoking and interest in tobacco harm reduction. He also heads the tobacco team for the ImpacTeen component of the RWJF-funded Bridging the Gap project. In addition, Giovino conducts tobacco surveillance and evaluation work with funding from the National Cancer Institute and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Giovino has authored or co-authored more than 170 scientific publications on tobacco, including his work on several reports of the Surgeon General, dozens of articles in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, and an Institute of Medicine report on tobacco harm reduction.
Telephone: 716.829.6952
Email: [email protected]
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Lan Liang, PhD
Lan Liang, Ph.D., is a Senior Economist in the Center for Financing, Access, and Cost Trends at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). She is also a research economist affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Liang earned her doctoral degree in economics from Duke University in 1999. Prior to joining AHRQ, Dr. Liang was an assistant professor in the economics department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Much of Dr. Liang’s research has been in the area of economics of substance use and abuse. She has analyzed issues such as how prices and other substance control policies affects the demand for tobacco and alcohol, why some drinking and driving laws are more effective than others, and whether comprehensive tobacco control programs have prompted public policy changes at the state level. Dr. Liang’s research has been funded by a number of federal agencies and private foundations, including the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the Centers for Disease Control and Health Promotion, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the American Cancer Society. She has recently finished a study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation looking at the effectiveness of tobacco control policies among adolescents with emotional and behavioral problems. Her research has appeared in both public health and economics journals. Dr. Liang was a Faculty Scholar of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Research Network on the Etiology of Tobacco and an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education faculty research participant at the CDC.
Telephone: 301.427.1575
Email: [email protected]
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Anna Sandoval, MPH
Anna Sandoval is a research specialist for ImpacTeen. She received her master of public health degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1999. She has worked extensively on the ImpacTeen project overseeing community field data collection, including defining ImpacTeen communities, identifying local jurisdictions, and managing community information databases. Ms. Sandoval has worked on the ImpacTeen SmokeLess States Evaluation project coordinating and analyzing the legislative database. She has worked with the Centers for Disease Control Prevention Centers Tobacco Network and the State and Community Partnerships as project coordinator. Currently, Ms. Sandoval is working on the Food and Fitness project overseeing survey data collection and analyzing school district policies. Her research interests include youth ATOD, health education and promotion, health policy, and obesity and physical activity.
Telephone: 312.355.2388
Email: [email protected]
Carol Schmitt, PhD
Dr. Carol Schmitt is a research public health analyst at RTI International with 10 years of experience in evaluation design and public health approaches to tobacco use and other health risk behaviors. Her early work focused on addressing academic disparities in higher education and she has expanded this interest to health-related disparities. Dr. Schmitt has led the administration of the Strength of Tobacco Control survey since 1999, and was the senior scientific co-editor of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI’s) Tobacco Control Monograph 17, which documents the American Stop Smoking Intervention Study evaluation. She is currently Associate Project Director for the New York Bureau of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control (NYBTUPC) evaluation, Co-Director of the Pfizer Foundation’s Global Health Partnership evaluation, and Task leader for the evaluation of Voice, the youth-directed anti-tobacco initiative of the Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program.
Email: [email protected]
Catherine Siebel, MA
Catherine Siebel leads the media portion of the Smokeless States evaluation project, in particular analyzing the extent to which various state- and local-level factors change the nature of newspaper coverage about tobacco. She is also an Investigator for a project sponsored by the American Cancer Society that investigates the relationship between news coverage and tobacco-related attitudes and behaviors (Katherine Clegg Smith, PI). Concurrently, Ms. Siebel is completing her doctoral work in the Sociology Department at UIC. Using the news data, she is examining how press coverage of tobacco changes depending on its context, in particular considering the role of local culture and economics in framing the news.
Telephone: 312.355.4551
Email: [email protected]
Sandy Slater, PhD
Sandy Slater, PhD, Senior Research Specialist at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is a health policy analyst whose research focuses on the impact of state and local policies, and other environmental factors on health behavior. Since joining UIC, Dr. Slater has examined state and local policies, socioeconomic, geographic and store type variation in tobacco and alcohol retail marketing strategies and their association to youth smoking and drinking attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. More recently, Dr. Slater is investigating the impact of socioeconomic and other environmental factors on physical activity and obesity. Specifically, she conducts research aimed at understanding factors in the environment that provide opportunities, and those that constrain, the ability for individuals to be physically active. Her research has included examining the relationship between the availability of outdoor physical activity-related settings and commercial physical activity-related outlets on race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, as well as on youth physical activity behavior and overweight. Her National Institutes of Health-funded research examines the importance of school and community physical activity settings and opportunities on youth physical activity levels, overweight and obesity. She also developed a guide that inventories existing obesity-related data sources, identifies what factors are currently being measured, and what is missing from existing sources to determine what measures should be developed for future research.
Telephone: 312.413.0475
Email: [email protected]
Web: http://www.uic.edu/~sslater
Fran Stillman, PhD
Dr. Stillman is a clinical psychologist and has over 16 years of tobacco experience in tobacco control, working at the local, state, and national levels. She recently joined the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health from the National Cancer Institute where she was the Director of the American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (ASSIST). Dr. Stillman is currently the Co-Director for the Institute for Global Tobacco Control and an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Epidemiology. She is a nationally recognized expert on quantitative and qualitative evaluation methodologies. Dr. Stillman has considerable experience with developing and evaluating policy change, coordinating multidisciplinary research projects and in developing conceptual models, new measures (Initial Outcome Index, Strength of Tobacco Control Index) an in overseeing large, complex research endeavors. She has published extensively on policy research, smoking cessation, and evaluation of tobacco control programs.
Email: [email protected]
Cindy Tworek, PhD, MS, MPH
Dr. Tworek received a Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Community Health from the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Currently, Dr. Tworek is an Associate Research Scientist in the Center for Public Health Improvement and Innovation at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), in Calverton, Maryland and is working with health behavior and health prevention systems and including models for substance abuse prevention related to alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs. Past and present research has included a focus on health policy related to tobacco and behavioral health. She has conducted tobacco control and policy research, and has extensive experience in survey design, needs assessment, focus groups, and evaluation. She has been the ImpacTeen Tobacco Component Project Manager, and much of her work has focused on youth tobacco use, including youth smoking cessation and the relationship between health policy and adolescent smoking behavior. Research interests include: tobacco control, health behavior, health policy, public health, epidemiology, adolescent health, health services research, community intervention, evaluation, and substance abuse prevention.
Email: [email protected]
