Appendix I
Committee Member and Staff Biographies
Steven M. Teutsch, M.D., M.P.H. (Chair), is an adjunct professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and Senior Fellow at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California. Until 2014, he was the chief science officer for Los Angeles County Public Health, where he continued his work on evidence-based public health and policy. Previously, Dr. Teutsch worked at Merck, where he was responsible for scientific leadership in developing evidence-based clinical management programs, conducting outcomes research studies, and improving outcomes measurement to enhance quality of care. Prior to joining Merck, he was director of the Division of Prevention Research and Analytic Methods at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he was responsible for assessing the effectiveness, safety, and cost-effectiveness of disease and injury prevention strategies. Dr. Teutsch has served as a member of the Community Preventive Services Task Force, U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, Americas Health Information Community Personalized Health Care Workgroup, and Evaluation of Genomic Applications in Prevention and Practice Workgroup. He chaired the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics Health and Society and served on or chaired several National Academies panels, Medicare’s Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee, and several subcommittees of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Healthy People 2020 and 2030. Dr. Teutsch has published more than 200 articles and 8 books in a broad range of fields in epidemiology, including parasitic diseases, diabetes, technology assessment, health services
research, and surveillance. He received his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences at Harvard University, M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, and M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine. He was certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 1977 and the American Board of Preventive Medicine in 1995 and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and American College of Preventive Medicine.
Wei Bao, M.D., Ph.D., is an assistant professor of epidemiology in the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa. His broad epidemiological interests include research into diabetes and obesity, diet and lifestyle, tobacco use, chronic disease epidemiology, and molecular epidemiology. At the university, Dr. Bao is a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center, Obesity Research and Education Initiative, and Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research and an associate member of the Environmental Health Sciences Research Center. He received his medical degree and Ph.D. from Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. Dr. Bao also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health. Resigned from the committee on August 20, 2021.
Neal Benowitz, M.D., is emeritus professor of medicine, Division of Cardiology, at the University of California, San Francisco, where he was chief of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology for more than 35 years. He is a leading authority on the human pharmacology of nicotine in relation to pathogenesis of and individual differences in vulnerability to tobacco-related disease and the use of pharmacologic data as a basis for public health policies to prevent and reduce it. Dr. Benowitz has served on a number of national and international committees addressing issues in tobacco-related diseases and smoking cessation, including several with the National Academies. He has authored more than 700 publications, including a state-of-the-art review on nicotine addiction in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Benowitz is the former president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT), recipient of the Ove Ferno SRNT Award for Clinical Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, and former president of the American Society for Clincal Pharmacology and Therapeutics. He has been a contributing author or editor for six U.S. Surgeon General reports on tobacco. Dr. Benowitz is currently on retainer to serve as an expert witness for litigation related to cigarettes. He also serves on the data safety monitoring board for Achieve Health Sciences. He earned his M.D. from the University of Rochester.
Cristine D. Delnevo, Ph.D., M.P.H., FAAHB, is the founding director of the Center for Tobacco Studies at Rutgers University and Professor of Health Behavior, Society, and Policy at the Rutgers School of Public Health. She also serves as the senior advisor on Tobacco Control at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. She has held numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and focuses on the population epidemology of tobacco use, in particular noncigarette products, such as electronic cigarettes and cigars; the impact of product characteristics, such as menthol or flavoring in tobacco products, on patterns of use; tobacco communication and marketing; and monitoring market trends for rapid surveillance—all in the context of tobacco control policy and regulatory science. She is the recipient of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco John Slade Award for outstanding contributions to public health and tobacco control through science-based public policy and public advocacy. She has published more than 200 scientific articles and book chapters and been recognized by Clarivate in 2020 and 2021 with their “Highly Cited Researcher Award.” She was appointed to the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee at FDA in March 2021. Dr. Delnevo received her M.P.H. from the Rutgers School of Public Health and Ph.D. in health studies from Temple University.
Pebbles Fagan, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education. She is also the director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco at the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences director of research in the Office of Health Initiatives and Disparities Research, Department of Surgery, College of Medicine. Dr. Fagan is a behavioral scientist with more than 25 years of experience in conducting research that aims to increase knowledge on how to reduce tobacco- and cancer-related health disparities in racial/ethnic, socially disadvantaged, and marginalized communities. She uses team-based science to examine social, behavioral, and biobehavioral factors associated with health disparities. Formerly, she was a health scientist at the Tobacco Control Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute, where she cofounded the Tobacco Research Network on Disparities, the first national research network designed to stimulate novel collaborative research in such disparities. In 2011, Dr. Fagan became an associate professor and program director for the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center. In 2016, she joined the faculty at Fay W. Boozman as a professor and director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco. Dr. Fagan was instrumental in advancing a series of papers that informed the content of several reports that describe the impact of menthol cigarettes on the public’s health. Dr.
Fagan earned her Ph.D. in health education and community health from Texas A&M University and her M.P.H. from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Maciej Goniewicz, Ph.D., Pharm.D., is a full member of the Department of Health Behavior, Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Goniewicz’s primary research area is nicotine pharmacology and toxicology, with a focus on nicotine dependence and smoking cessation. He has research experience in smoking cessation behavioral treatment, pharmacotherapy, and pharmacokinetics in both clinical and community-based settings. He has authored more than 170 scientific papers on topics related to tobacco control, biomarkers, and nicotine-containing products. Dr. Goniewicz is a member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, Society of Toxicology, and American Association for Cancer Research and was on the National Academies committee on the Public Health Consequences of E-Cigarettes. He earned his Pharm.D. and Ph.D. from the Medical University of Silesia, Poland. He completed his postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, San Francisco and Queen Mary University of London, UK.
Stephen S. Hecht, Ph.D., is the Wallin Land Grant Professor of Cancer Prevention in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and a professor at the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. Hecht’s research is focused on understanding the ways tobacco smoke constituents cause cancer. His research focuses on carcinogens, such as tobacco-specific nitrosamines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and certain volatiles, such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acrolein. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society. Dr. Hecht has received the Joseph Cullen Award from the American Society of Preventive Oncology, Merit Award from the National Cancer Institute, and Award for Excellence in Cancer Prevention Research from the American Association for Cancer Research. Dr. Hecht was a member of the National Academies committee on scientific standards for studies on modified risk tobacco products. He earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Miranda R. Jones, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Jones is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on environmental and social determinants of chronic diseases. She is specifically interested in the health impacts of environmental exposures, including tobacco, secondhand
smoke, air pollution, and heavy metals, and their role in racial and ethnic disparities in cancer and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Jones earned her B.A. in health administration and policy from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and her M.H.S. and Ph.D. in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Cancer Epidemiology, Prevention, and Control in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Grace Kong, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Kong’s current research interests include understanding substance use health disparities among youth, the use of social media for tobacco marketing, novel tobacco use behaviors among youth, and developing innovative adolescent tobacco/cessation interventions for youth. Dr. Kong received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology (child and adolescent track) at St. John’s University in 2009 and completed her National Institute on Drug Abuse T32 postdoctoral fellowship focused on adolescent addictions in the Division of Substance Abuse at Yale School of Medicine in 2012.
Adam Leventhal, Ph.D., professor within the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), is a clinical psychologist and public health scientist who aims to understand and prevent addiction. He is founding director of the USC Institute for Addiction Science, which supports transdisciplinary collaborative addiction research and education, including 63 faculty members across eight schools. Having been awarded more than $40 million in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and other agencies, his laboratory focuses on (1) adolescent and young adult tobacco, cannabis, and opioid use; (2) addiction among populations with mental illness, from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds, with socioeconomic disadvantage, and other groups subject to health disparities; (3) the development of medications to treat nicotine addiction; (4) science to inform public policies for regulating tobacco and other addictive consumer products; and (5) cancer and cardiovascular disease prevention. Dr. Leventhal has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific articles, including publications in JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, and other journals. His work has been covered by the Associated Press, NBC Nightly News, New York Times, and other media outlets. Dr. Leventhal has served on expert panels on the health effects of tobacco products for the National Academies, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the U.S. Surgeon General. He is a member of the FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, an elected fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior and American Psychological
Association, and recipient of awards for contributions to addiction science and mentoring.
Darren Mays, Ph.D., M.P.H., is as an associate professor in the Division of Medical Oncology at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. Dr. Mays is a behavioral scientist with more than 10 years of experience in behavioral cancer prevention and control research, with a major emphasis on tobacco prevention and cessation. Dr. Mays’ research investigates the uptake and progression of tobacco use among young people, risk factors for tobacco use, and behavioral prevention and cessation interventions. He also focuses on tobacco policy and regulation, such as policies targeting tobacco packaging, labeling, and advertising. Dr. Mays has published more than 100 peer-reviewed research articles and presented his research widely. Dr. Mays is a longstanding member of several professional organizations, including the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, Society of Behavioral Medicine, and American Public Health Association. Dr. Mays received his M.P.H. from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and Ph.D. from the Rollins School of Public Health & James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies at Emory University.
Rafael Meza, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan (UM). Dr. Meza is principal investigator of the UM/Georgetown TCORS Center for the Assessment of Tobacco Regulations and coordinating principal investigator of the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network lung cancer working group. Dr. Meza’s research focuses on the use of simulation modeling and quantitative methods to assess the impact of disease prevention and control interventions, particularly for tobacco control and lung cancer. Dr. Meza received his B.Sc. in applied mathematics from the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico and Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Washington. After his Ph.D., Dr. Meza completed a 2-year fellowship at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a 3-year fellowship at the University of British Columbia Center for Disease Control.
Kymberle Landrum Sterling, Ph.D., M.P.H., is an associate professor of health promotion and behavioral sciences at the University of Texas (UT) Health School of Public Health, Dallas Regional Campus. Dr. Sterling is a tobacco control behavioral scientist, with expertise in youth and young adult cigarette and novel tobacco product use, tobacco-related health disparities, and smoking cessation. She has served as the principal investigator of two tobacco control regulatory science research grants funded by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that assessed flavored cigar smoking and identified risk
perceptions of it among racially/ethnically diverse young adults. Her research has informed federal tobacco control policies, specifically FDA’s expansion of its regulatory authority to cigars. She is the principal investigator of an FDA/NIH tobacco regulatory sciences research grant examining the effects of implied modified risk statements on flavored cigar advertising on cigar use behaviors among young adults. An important methodological feature of her research is community-based research principles to engage with vulnerable communities to assess their health needs and develop culturally tailored, evidence-based interventions to optimize their health behavior outcomes and mitigate health disparities. She also has methodological expertise in mixed-methods (survey and qualitative research) and experimental study designs and latent variable modeling. Dr. Sterling was trained as a cell and molecular biologist at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, before receiving her doctorate in health promotion and behavioral sciences at the UT Health School of Public Health, Houston.
Andrea Villanti, Ph.D., M.P.H., was an associate professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Vermont through December 2021. Beginning January 18, 2022, Dr. Villanti serves as associate professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and as Deputy Director of Rutgers Center for Tobacco Studies. Her primary research focus is young adult tobacco use, including predictors and patterns of and interventions to reduce use. She also has expertise in translational research to improve tobacco control policy and program decision making, including tobacco regulatory science. Her work focuses on design, collection, and analysis of population survey data and conducting experiments and intervention trials in large, online samples. Dr. Villanti’s current NIH-funded research projects include testing a nicotine corrective messaging intervention, evaluating the substitutability of plausible menthol cigarette alternatives, and evaluating state-level policy and communication efforts to prevent substance use in youth and young adults. Dr. Villanti earned her M.P.H. from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
STAFF
Amy Geller, M.P.H., is a senior program officer in the Health and Medicine Division (HMD) on the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice. During her 19 years at the National Academies, she has staffed committees spanning many topics, including advancing health equity, reducing alcohol-impaired driving fatalities, workforce resilience, vaccine safety, reducing tobacco use, drug safety, and treating post-traumatic
stress disorder. She was and is the study director, respectively, for the recently released HMD report Sexually Transmitted Infections: Adopting a Sexual Health Paradigm and the HMD Committee on Patterns of Use and Health Effects of “Premium Cigars” and Priority Research. She also directs the DC Public Health Case Challenge, a joint activity of HMD and the National Academy of Medicine that aims to promote interdisciplinary, problem-based learning for college students at universities in the DC area.
Aimee Mead, M.P.H., is an associate program officer on the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice. She has staffed National Academies’ consensus reports confronting a variety of public health challenges, including eliminating hepatitis B and C in the United States, reducing alcohol-impaired driving, reviewing the public health consequences of e-cigarettes, and preventing sexually transmitted infections. She has also supported the Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine. Before joining the National Academies, she worked at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. She received her M.P.H. from the Yale School of Public Health and B.S. from Cornell University.
Sophie Yang was a research associate in the Health and Medicine Division on the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice. She staffed National Academies’ consensus studies on prevention and control of sexually transmitted infections, promoting health equity in the prenatal through early childhood periods, reducing fatalities from alcohol-impaired driving, eliminating hepatitis B and C in the United States, promoting health equity through community-based solutions, and improving access and affordability of hearing health care for adults. She also staffed the DC Public Health Case Challenge, a joint activity of the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies and the National Academy of Medicine. She graduated from Bowdoin College in 2013 with a B.A. in Asian studies and economics.
Maggie Anderson is a research assistant in the Health and Medicine Division on the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice. Before joining the National Academies, Ms. Anderson worked at Program Savvy Consulting as an independent contractor and as an intern with the Food Policy Council of Buffalo and Erie County. She received a B.A. in biology with a minor in environmental studies from Mount Holyoke College.
Harika Dyer was a research assistant in the Health and Medicine Division on the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice from April 2020 through July 2021. She is an M.P.H. student in epidemiology at the
University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), 2021 Diversity Scholar, and student research assistant in GSPH’s Center for Health Equity. Before joining the National Academies, Ms. Dyer worked as a medical scribe and as a sustainability program associate at Booz Allen Hamilton. She received her L.L.B. from the University of the West Indies and B.A. in political science from Georgia State University.
Rose Marie Martinez, Sc.D., is the senior director of the National Academies’ Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice (1999–present). The board has a vibrant portfolio of studies on high-profile and pressing issues that affect population health. It addresses the science base for population health and public health interventions and examines the capacity of the health system, particularly the public health infrastructure, to support disease prevention and health promotion activities, including educating and supplying the health professionals necessary for carrying them out. The board has examined such topics as the safety of childhood vaccines and other drugs; systems for evaluating and ensuring drug safety after marketing; pandemic influenza planning; the health effects of cannabis and cannabinoids; the health effects of environmental exposures; the integration of medical care and public health; women’s health services; health disparities; health literacy; tobacco control strategies; and chronic disease prevention. Dr. Martinez was a senior health researcher at Mathematica Policy Research (1995–1999), where she conducted research on the impact of health system change on the public health infrastructure, access to care for low-income populations, managed care, and the health care workforce. Dr. Martinez is a former assistant director for health financing and policy with the U.S. General Accounting Office, where she directed evaluations and policy analysis in the area of national and public health issues (1988–1995). Her experience also includes 6 years directing research studies for the Regional Health Ministry of Madrid, Spain (1982–1988). Dr. Martinez received her Sc.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Y. Crysti Park is an administrative assistant in the Health and Medicine Division on the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice and was a senior program assistant for the Board on Health Sciences Policy. Earlier, she was an executive in the garment industry.
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