Funding Awarded to Study Messaging about the Continuum of Risk for Tobacco Products

August 21, 2024

Today, the FDA Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), awarded a cooperative agreement grant (U01) titled, “From Perceptions to Behaviors: A Comprehensive Approach to Examine the Impact of Public Health Communication Messaging about the Continuum of Risk for Tobacco Products.” The Principal Investigators, Drs. Meghan Moran of Johns Hopkins University and Andy Tan of the University of Pennsylvania, will conduct health communication studies to better understand the impact that messaging about the continuum of risk for tobacco products may have on various segments of the population.

This research, first announced through a Notice of Funding Opportunity in August 2023, will provide CTP with data to inform potential public education efforts on the continuum of risk for tobacco products – the understanding that the health risks for different tobacco products exist on a spectrum. Specifically, the research will look at how the FDA can accurately convey the relative risks of tobacco products to adults who use combustible tobacco, while ensuring these messages do not appeal to other audiences, including youth. 

Current research in this area has been limited, and this project aims to fill this gap by collecting data to optimize public health communication on the topic. In an effort to educate adults who smoke about the existing research on the topic, the agency released in April 2024 a new website on the relative risk of tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. 

This cooperative agreement is the latest award from Tobacco Regulatory Science Program (TRSP), a long-standing interagency partnership between FDA and NIH to foster tobacco regulatory research. TRSP is part of FDA’s comprehensive and scientifically rigorous research portfolio.