Youth tobacco project awards grants for smoking prevention research

By Lorraine Cichowski and J. Randy Kock

RICHMOND, Va. – The Virginia Youth Tobacco Project, in conjunction with the Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, has awarded grants totaling $210,000 to six academic researchers across the state to study the causes and prevention of tobacco use by youths.

The grant program, which was open to all public universities and colleges in Virginia, is intended to attract new faculty scholars to work on the problems of youth smoking, encourage multi-university collaborations and stimulate pilot studies that can be used to attract additional funding.

Receiving awards:

• Julie Linker, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at VCU, “Smoking Habits of Adolescent Outpatients with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders.”

• Faye Z. Belgrave, Ph.D., professor of psychology at VCU, “Protective Factors for Tobacco Use among African-American Adolescents.”

• Bruce P. Dembling, Ph.D., senior research scientist of health evaluation sciences at the University of Virginia, “Youth Tobacco Control Policy Research: Behavioral and Biological Factors.”

• Pamela A. Kulbok, DNSc, RN, associate professor of nursing at UVa, “Protective Factors and Youth Nonsmoking Behavior.”

• Josh A. Burk, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at the College of William and Mary, “Adolescent Nicotine and Alcohol Administration and Cognition.”

• Zewelanji N. Serpell, administrator for Preventing Youth Smoking through Collaborative Community-Based Care program at James Madison University, “Social Factors Related to Smoking Among Middle and High School Students with ADHD.”

“The Small Grants Program has been very successful in generating interest in youth tobacco research on the part of a large number of university researchers,” said J. Randy Koch, Ph.D., executive director of VCU’s Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies.  “These include both junior faculty and highly experienced investigators who will bring many years of experience and expertise to bear on what for them is often a new field of research.

“The Small Grants Program has been successful in stimulating a wide variety of studies on the causes and prevention of youth tobacco use, ranging from studies of gene expression and genetic epidemiology to an examination of risk factors and smoking among high-risk populations of youth.”

The Virginia Youth Tobacco Project, coordinated by VCU, is a coalition of Virginia universities originated by the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation to study why young people begin to smoke and why some become addicted to nicotine in tobacco products. The team, which also includes researchers from the University of Virginia, James Madison University, Virginia Tech and George Mason University, also is evaluating which anti-tobacco programs work most effectively.

The project is funded by the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation (VTSF), which was created by the General Assembly in 1999 to lead a statewide effort to reduce and prevent the use of tobacco products by youths in Virginia. The VTSF is meeting its mission through multifaceted efforts, including innovative research, statewide community programs and education, a youth-targeted marketing and advertising campaign and enforcement of Virginia’s tobacco access laws. Virginia has committed 10 percent of its share of the national Master Settlement Agreement with tobacco product manufacturers to fight youth tobacco use.