UW-CTRI Director Dr. Michael Fiore and Dr. Robin Mermelstein of the University of Illinois at Chicago last week presented tobacco control research priorities to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Board of Scientific Advisors (BSA) on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. For the last year, Drs. Fiore and Mermelstein have served as co-chairs of a work group charged with describing potential tobacco-control-research priorities for the NCI for the next decade.
The 7 research priorities were to:
- Optimize intervention effectiveness.
- Reduce adolescent and young adult tobacco use.
- Address disparities in tobacco use and its harms.
- Understand the complexity of current tobacco products, patterns of use, and associated health-related outcomes.
- Develop novel behavioral interventions for tobacco use.
- Use a chronic care approach to address tobacco use across all its developmental phases.
- Identify innovative policy approaches that further reduce tobacco use.
The BSA discussed how NCI can best advance tobacco control research. Several members of the board expressed concern about the high rates of smoking, illness, and death among behavioral health patients, and the need for more research on smoking and behavioral health.