Leveraging Eye-Tracking To Promote Health Equity Through Tobacco Control

Wednesday, May 15, 2024

2:30 PM-4:00 PM

BIOMED Seminar

Title:
Leveraging Eye-Tracking To Promote Health Equity Through Tobacco Control

Speaker:
Lilianna Phan, PhD, MPH, MS
Assistant Professor
FIRST Faculty
Department of Community Health and Prevention
Dornsife School of Public Health
Division of Graduate Nursing, College of Nursing and Health Professions
Drexel University

Details:
Commercial tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the U.S. Cigar smoking (i.e., little cigars, cigarillos, large cigars) causes multiple cancers and pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases. A recent national consensus reported that the use of little filtered cigars and cigarillos is as harmful as cigarette smoking given use behaviors.

Racial disparities in cigar smoking emerge during young adulthood, with Black young adults having the highest prevalence of little filtered cigar and cigarillo smoking than any other racial and age group in the U.S. These disparities are in large part shaped by tobacco industry targeted marketing and advertising, and extend throughout adulthood.

To date, there is limited salient health communication on the harms of cigar smoking for Black young adults. Through Dr. Phan’s NCI/FDA-funded Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00), we have developed cigarillo smoking prevention messages for Black young adults and are examining their potential impact on increasing harm perceptions, to ultimately help prevent cigarillo smoking. This seminar will provide a brief contextual overview of racial disparities in cigar smoking in the U.S., the message development process, and how we are leveraging eye-tracking methodology to examine message effectiveness. Overall, this area of research will inform the design of public education messaging to help reduce tobacco-related health disparities and promote health equity.

Biosketch:
Lilianna Phan, PhD, MPH, MS, is a social and behavioral scientist focused on understanding multilevel determinants of tobacco use disparities and how we can leverage health communication science to help reduce these disparities. Dr. Phan is a Drexel FIRST (Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation program) faculty member and an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health and Prevention at the Dornsife School of Public Health with a joint appointment in the Division of Graduate Nursing at the College of Nursing and Health Professions. She is also a full member of the Cancer Risk and Control Program with the Sidney Kimmel Kidney Cancer Center Research Consortium. Dr. Phan directs The PHAN (Promoting Health EQUITY in Addressing Nicotine) Lab here at Drexel.

Prior to joining Drexel in September 2023, Dr. Phan was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) Division of Intramural Research. During her fellowship, she was a recipient of the 2022 Coleman Research Innovation Award and also received the NIH Summer Research Mentor Award for three consecutive years. Dr. Phan also completed early postdoctoral training at the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center where she received the 2020 Richard C. Devereaux Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

Contact Information

Carolyn Riley
cr63@drexel.edu