Healthy Lamoille Valley hosted a panel of distinguished experts for our Tobacco & Vape Prevention and Cessation Taskforce meeting: “Supporting Youth Vape and Nicotine Cessation” on February 23rd. Watch the video recording below and download the presentation slides:
Dr. Andrea Villanti’s Presentation Slides- Supporting Nicotine Cessation in Young Vermonters
Dr. Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin Presentation Slides – E-cigarette Cessation Interventions
Panelists:
Andrea Villanti, PhD, MPH, is Deputy Director of the Rutgers Center for Tobacco Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior, Society and Policy at the Rutgers School of Public Health. She also holds an adjunct faculty appointment in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine. Dr. Villanti’s primary focus is on young adult tobacco use, including predictors and patterns of use and interventions to reduce tobacco use in young adults. She also has expertise in population surveillance of tobacco and substance use and translational research to improve substance use-related policy and program decision-making, including tobacco regulatory science. She received her doctorate in social and behavioral sciences from the Johns Hopkins University and her master’s in public health degree from Columbia University.
Dr. Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. She is also a Chair of the Human Investigations Committee (IRB) at Yale. Her research is focused on developing a bio-behavioral understanding of substance use behaviors in adult and adolescent substance users, with the goal of developing optimal prevention and cessation interventions. In the area of adolescent tobacco use, her research focuses on understanding the appeal, abuse potential and patterns of use of tobacco products, developing and testing the use of novel behavioral and pharmacological cessation and prevention interventions, and understanding behavioral and neural predictors of use and cessation behaviors. She has contributed to the Surgeon General’s reports on youth tobacco use behaviors, served as a member of the FDA’s Tobacco Product Scientific Advisory Committee and currently serves on the CDC’s Interagency Commission on Smoking and Health. Dr. Krishnan-Sarin is the Co-PI on the Yale Tobacco Centers Of Regulatory Science, funded by the NIH and FDA, which is using a multidisciplinary approach to understand the role of flavors and other constituents of tobacco products in tobacco and nicotine addiction. She also leads the ENACT initiative funded by the American Heart Association which is focused on developing interventions for e-cigarette use behaviors among youth. In a separate and distinct line of research Dr. Krishnan-Sarin also develops and tests novel pharmacological interventions for alcohol use disorders in adults and examines neurochemical predictors of alcohol use and treatment response. Watch Dr. Krishnan-Sarin‘s TED talk below Dr Krishnan-Sarin Cessation talk Feb 2023 published
Tricia Dahl is a senior Research Assistant at Yale School of Medicine working directly for Dr. Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin. Since 2001, she has worked on a number of clinical trials in the area of adult and adolescent substance abuse. She has done extensive work with adults who are heavy drinkers in an effort to find an effective way to treat alcoholism. She has also been involved in researching the effects of e-cigarettes on adolescent behavior as part of Yale’s Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science, which recently completed a 5 year grant looking at how flavors, and sweeteners affect the initiation and development of addiction to current tobacco and modified risk tobacco products. Ms. Dahl has been extensively involved in the dissemination of research findings about e-cigarettes to local communities, including schools, both public and private, PTAs, athletic coaches and school administration, town councils, and Juvenile Review Boards. She has traveled to over 70 schools in Connecticut where she has presented talks about adolescent vaping behaviors and potential concerns to parents, administrator, teachers and students.