Study on the Impact of Public Health Communication on Tobacco

According to a statement on the official website of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on August 21st, the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have today awarded a collaborative agreement grant (U01) for a project titled "From Cognition to Behavior: Comprehensive Study of the Methods for Public Health Communication Information's Impact on the Continuity of Tobacco Product Risk.

Dr. Meghan Moran from Johns Hopkins University and Dr. Andy Tan from the University of Pennsylvania are the chief researchers of the project. They will conduct health communication research to better understand how messages about the continuum of risk of tobacco products may impact different populations.

The study, first announced through a funding opportunity notification in August 2023, aims to provide data for the FDA to help formulate potential public education efforts for CTP. These efforts will convey the concept of continuum of risk related to tobacco products, that is, the idea that there is a spectrum of health risks associated with different tobacco products. Specifically, the study will explore how the FDA can accurately communicate relative risk to adults who use combustible tobacco, while ensuring that this information does not appeal to other audiences, particularly youth.

According to the FDA, research in this field is currently limited, and this project aims to fill this gap by collecting data to optimize public health communication on the topic. In order to educate adult smokers about existing research, the agency launched a new website in April 2024 on the relative risks of tobacco products, including information on e-cigarettes.

This partnership agreement is the latest funding achievement of the Tobacco Regulatory Science Program (TRSP). TRSP is a long-standing cross-agency partnership between the FDA and NIH aimed at promoting tobacco regulatory research.