2020  Research Laureate

Jennifer B. Unger, PhD

University of Southern California

Keck School of Medicine

Jennifer B. Unger, Ph.D. is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine.  Her research focuses on the psychological, social, and cultural influences on health-risk and health-protective behaviors including tobacco and cannabis use.  She and her colleagues have conducted several longitudinal studies of acculturation and substance use among Hispanic adolescents, highlighting the role of discrimination in health-risk behaviors. 

Her research also has examined cultural influences on tobacco use among American Indian adolescents, Chinese adolescents, and African American adults. She is currently conducting a study of the association between proximity to cannabis retailers and cannabis use among adolescents.  She is interested in entertainment-education strategies for health education among low-literacy minority populations and has collaborated on the design and evaluation of fotonovelas and telenovelas about secondhand smoke exposure in multiunit housing; diabetes; asthma; immunization; and kidney transplantation. 

She is a co-investigator in the USC Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS), where she studies diffusion of messages about emerging tobacco products to vulnerable populations through social media. Dr. Unger directs the Ph.D. program in Preventive Medicine / Health Behavior Research. She is an Associate Editor for Substance Use and Misuse and Tobacco Regulatory Science.

2019 Research Laureate

Kenneth Michael Cummings, PhD, MPH

Medical University of South Carolina

Dr. Cummings is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and member of the Hollings Cancer Center’s Cancer Control Program where he co-leads the tobacco control research program. He is widely recognized for his research on smoking behavior, product marketing, consumer risk perceptions, and the influence of cigarette design on smoking behavior. In 2002, Dr. Cummings and colleagues established the International Tobacco Control Policy Research Project a way to evaluate impact of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.  This study, now implemented in over 25 countries around the world, has helped to generate evidenced used to guide tobacco control policy implementation around the world.  Dr. Cummings has authored over 450 peer-reviewed scientific papers as well as contributing to reports for the Office of the Surgeon General, the National Cancer Institute, the Institute of Medicine, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer.  In the late 1990s, Dr. Cummings was involved in digitizing and indexing millions of pages of previously secret internal tobacco industry documents which have helped to uncover how cigarette manufacturers directed their marketing to attract youthful replacement smokers and designed cigarettes in ways that make it hard for smokers to quit once they get addicted to nicotine. He has served as an expert witness in litigation against cigarette manufacturers in over 150 trials. In 2009, he received the prestigious American Cancer Society Luther L. Terry Award for Outstanding Research Contribution in recognition of his research contributions in tobacco control.

2017 - Dr. Kenneth D. Ward

Dr. Ward is Professor and Director of the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Memphis School of Public Health.  His research focuses on community-, healthcare system-, and population-level approaches to reducing the burden of tobacco use.  He is co-founder and Intervention Director of the Syrian Center for Tobacco Studies, which is the Eastern Mediterranean Region's first comprehensive tobacco control research center (http://www.scts-sy.org) and the recipient of the Hamdan Award for the Best Medical Institute in the Arab World.  

Dr. Ward’s research has been funded by more than 35 grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and other funders.  At the University of Memphis, he is the recipient of the Faudree Professorship and the Willard R. Sparks Eminent Faculty Award.  Dr. Ward is a fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior and the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and was recently a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. 

Presentation Title:  Reflections on 15 years in the global tobacco trenches

2016 - Dr. Marcia G. Ory

Marcia G. Ory, Ph.D., M.P.H., is Regents and Distinguished Professor, Department of Health Promotion and Community Health Sciences, School of Public Health (SPH) at The Texas A&M Health Science Center in College Station, Texas.  Her primary administrative role is serving as Associate Dean for Research (since February 2015). She is also the Director of the SPH Program on Healthy Aging, chair of the Health and Wellness Committee, and the academic partner for the Community Research Center for Senior Health.  She has been a principal investigator on multiple local, state and federally funded grants to implement and evaluate evidence-based behavioral interventions for promoting healthy lifestyle changes in midlife and older ages.  

2015 - Dr. Gary L. Kreps

Gary L. Kreps Ph.D., is a University Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University. His research examines health communication, health promotion, health informatics, multicultural relations, social organization, and applied research methods, with a major focus on reducing health disparities. Gary was the founding Chief of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NIH) from 1999 to 2004, where he planned major national research and intervention programs for promoting cancer prevention and control.  He also served as the founding Dean of the School of Communication at Hofstra University, Executive Director of the Greenspun School of Communication at UNLV, and a professor at Northern Illinois, Rutgers, Indiana, and Purdue Universities.

2014 - Dr. David B. Abrams

Dr. David Abrams is Executive Director, The Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at Legacy, and a Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Georgetown University Medical Center and the University of Maryland. He is a clinical health psychologist. He was Director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and prior to that he was Professor and founding Director of the Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine at Brown University Medical School. He holds a B.Sc. (honours) in computer science and psychology from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa and a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Rutgers University.

2012 – Dr. Andrea Gielen

Andrea Gielen, Sc.D., Sc.M. is Professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society and Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and holds joint appointments in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health and the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.  Dr. Gielen has almost three decades of public health experience, including as a public health department practitioner and an academic researcher directing numerous federally funded studies of health behaviors and behavior change interventions. Her research includes: child passenger safety, child pedestrian injury, bicycle helmet use among children and teens, older drivers, house fires and other home injuries, and domestic violence.

2011 – Dr. John Lowe

John Lowe, DrPH, is Head (Chairman) of the School of Health and Sport Sciences at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. Dr. Lowe's research interests are in cancer control and prevention and injury prevention. Since 1980, he has worked in the area of intervention studies for the cessation of smoking among adults, pregnant women, and the prevention and cessation of smoking among youth. He is internationally known for his work in the area of skin cancer prevention. Professor Lowe continues to focus his research on community development and empowerment to make sustainable long-term changes to promote health. 

2010 – Dr. Ken McLeroy

Kenneth R. McLeroy, Ph.D., is Professor of Social and Behavioral Health at the Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health. He is currently Principal Investigator on two large projects including a recently funded five-year renewal of the CDC funded Center for Community Health Development ($3.9 million) and the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD) funded Program for Rural and Minority Health Disparities Research ($6.8 million). Dr. McLeroy has published extensively on social ecology, the development and evaluation of community-based interventions, and critical community concepts such as community capacity, program institutionalization, and community coalitions. 

2009 – Dr. Ray Niaura

Raymond Niaura, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and Director of Transdisciplinary Research at Butler Hospital. His primary research interests include tobacco dependence and psychological factors affecting metabolism and cardiovascular diseases. Dr. Niaura has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on more than 30 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, as well as numerous grants from other funding agencies, including serving as PI of 14 on-going or completed multicenter, industry-sponsored pharmacological smoking cessation trials.