Brown School of Public Health: Up in Smoke

By: Carl Dimitri

December 11, 2023

The debate over vapes, nicotine pouches and the quest to reduce the global scourge of tobacco-related diseases and fatalities.

The Brown University School of Public Health has built an international reputation for producing impactful research on nicotine addiction and smoking cessation. Work pioneered at Brown by the Center of Alcohol and Addiction Studies starting in the 1980s advocated for a change in the nation’s attitude toward alcohol and tobacco dependence. Those efforts have expanded and flourished since the establishment of the School of Public Health a decade ago: Brown now boasts dozens of faculty members working to help people quit smoking. Among the leading scholars in this domain, Dr. Jasjit S. Ahluwalia and Dr. Jennifer Tidey, stand out as pioneering scholars and advocates for tobacco harm reduction.

With a portfolio of over 400 published manuscripts, Ahluwalia, professor of behavioral and social sciences and of medicine at Brown, ranks as the fourth-most prolific author worldwide in the field of smoking cessation. Tidey, the school’s associate dean for research and professor of behavioral and social sciences and of psychiatry and human behavior, is a national authority in tobacco regulatory science, working to provide the FDA with the information it needs to make evidence-driven and public health-centered policies for tobacco products.

Read more.