Annenberg School’s Andy Tan Co-leads $9.6 Million FDA and NIH Grant to Study Public Health Messaging About Risks of Tobacco Use

The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania has announced that a major grant from the FDA Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been awarded to a group of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University to study public health communication messaging about the continuum of risk for tobacco products.

“This project will be one of the first to conduct a broad evaluation of the impacts that messaging about the varying levels of risks associated with tobacco products may have among various population segments,” said Dr. Tan, director of the Health Communication and Equity Lab at Annenberg. “We have two complementary objectives in this research; the first is to communicate accurate information with adults who use combustible forms of tobacco so they can make informed decisions to use less harmful forms of tobacco, if they are unable to quit. Our second goal is to ensure that such messages do not lead to unintended effects of making tobacco products appealing to youth.”