Yan Wang
George Washington University, DC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Tobacco use does not fall evenly across the population. Illness and death from smoking and other tobacco products hit some groups harder than others, including Black and Hispanic individuals, people with lower socioeconomic status, and rural residents.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Social Science
Psychology
- Topics
tobacco use
smoking
e-cigarettes
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Characterize trajectories in tobacco use over time among US adults, including use of distinct products, any product, multiple products and flavored products, using the nationally representative longitudinal PATH cohort.
- Identify pathways underlying differences in tobacco use over time across high-risk subpopulations, testing tobacco marketing exposure and product perceptions of risk and social norms as mechanisms.
- Examine how marketing exposure and product perceptions change over time among youth, as outcomes in their own right and, where prevalence allows, as mechanisms leading to tobacco use in high-risk subgroups.
More about the research
Much existing research describes these groups using fixed social labels such as race, without explaining what actually drives the difference. Today's market also contains many distinct products, from cigarettes to electronic and flavored products, each with its own appeal, and research has not kept pace with how different subgroups take them up over time.
Why it matters
Tobacco-related disease falls disproportionately on Black and Hispanic individuals, lower-income groups and rural populations. Showing which products these groups take up over time, and how marketing exposure and risk perceptions drive that uptake, could inform targeted prevention programs and regulatory action such as limits on marketing directed at high-risk subpopulations, with the aim of lowering the national burden of tobacco-related disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rafael Meza
University of Michigan, MI·Public Health & Epidemiology
Characterize patterns of cigarette, cigar and electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) use across US population groups defined by sex, age and education level.
Meghan Morean
Yale University, CT·Public Health & Epidemiology
Refine an ENDS nicotine concentration label so its strength categories are anchored to cigarette nicotine content, using expert feedback and focus groups.
Zinzi Bailey
University of Minnesota, MN·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Relate the density of tobacco and e-cigarette stores around schools, and how close they are, to county-level youth e-cigarette use and marketing exposure in Florida, including differences by demographics and racial/ethnic segregation.
The school
George Washington University: 13 labs on PI Pages, $382M a year on research, 225 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.