The College of Arts and Sciences is one of six colleges at Ohio State participating in a new university research center devoted to the study of tobacco use patterns, industry marketing practices, and public perceptions to help the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) put science behind its new role in regulating tobacco.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and FDA announced today that Ohio State has received an $18.7 million federal grant to establish a Center of Excellence in Regulatory Tobacco Science (CERTS), one of 14 centers established nationally under a new federal initiative, called the Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science program, to ensure that the FDA’s regulation of tobacco is based on sound and relevant scientific evidence. Ohio State’s grant covers five years, with the first year of funding totaling almost $3.7 million. The National Cancer Institute will administer Ohio State's funding.

Arts and Sciences faculty affiliated with CERTS are Chris Browning, professor of sociology; Ellen Peters, professor of psychology and director of Ohio State's Behavioral Decision Making (BDM) Initiative; and Michael Slater, professor of communication.

Peters is the lead PI of one of the four projects in CERTS; her project is directed at understanding how information about the risks of tobacco use should be conveyed to the public so that it is understandable and not misleading. Although consumers have some knowledge of smoking’s major health risks, in-depth knowledge of tobacco’s health risks is low. With her team, Peters will conduct experimental studies of basic psychological mechanisms including affect and emotion, number processing, and memory to test their impact on maximizing risk knowledge. By doing so, the project has the potential to expand our understanding of how cognitive and emotional processes interact to influence the impact of tobacco-related health messages on perceptions and behavior.

Slater’s research areas include persuasive communication, messaged design, and health behavior, impacts of media on health, and basic research on processes of influence of media and messages on social identity, attitudes, and behavior. He has served as principal investigator on a variety of R01 studies examining impacts of advertising on youth alcohol attitudes, alcohol warning labels, impact of news on support for alcohol control policies, and psychological mechanisms for the impact of alcohol-related news and advertising. In addition, Slater has served as PI on two R01s testing approaches to marijuana use prevention in secondary schools, using an approach highlighting the inconsistency of such use with adolescent drives toward autonomy and agency.

In addition to the College of Arts and Sciences, the colleges of public health, medicine, nursing, Moritz College of Law, Fisher College of Business, and the Comprehensive Cancer Center (OSUCCC) will populate Ohio State’s new center. Investigators from four other institutions also are participants: the Universities of Kentucky and Pennsylvania, RTI International in North Carolina and Columbus-based Strategic Research Group.

Designed to generate vital research in seven core areas, as well as ensure innovation in the field, the research supported by the federal Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science program will provide scientific evidence within the following seven FDA tobacco-related research interest areas: diversity of tobacco products; reducing addiction; reducing toxicity and carcinogenicity; adverse health consequences; communications; marketing of tobacco products; and economics and policies.

Ohio State has proposed a broad research program that takes into account the biological, psychological, economic and public health implications associated with tobacco use and the industry’s marketing of products to consumers. Specifically, the university's aims are to reduce addiction and shed light on health problems arising from tobacco use among youths and adults in rural and urban settings, and to decrease tobacco-related harm by studying individual disease risk and the prevalence of product use – with a focus on dual use and new and emerging tobacco products.

Individual studies will assess the prevalence of smoking, smokeless tobacco and simultaneous use of these products; document carcinogen exposure and the genetics behind developing a taste for tobacco and nicotine dependence; analyze purchasing behavior and marketing practices in various environments; and explore the decision-making factors that lead people to choose to use tobacco in the first place.

Tobacco continues to be the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States, according to the NIH. With the FDA gaining regulatory authority over tobacco after the 2009 passage of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, the agencies say they are partnering to protect public health through science-based regulation.

Mary Ellen Wewers, professor of health behavior and health promotion, is co-leading the center with oncologist Peter Shields, deputy director of the OSUCCC and a specialist in identifying biomarkers to assess lifestyle-related cancer risk factors.

• Read the university press release, courtesy of Emily Caldwell, assistant director, Ohio State’s Research + Innovation Communications.
• Read the NIH release