Social and behavioral prevention and treatment

TRDRP supports research projects and collaborations from California universities and non-profit, community-based organizations with capacity to conduct research in diverse communities that prevent or reduce tobacco use and the impact of tobacco-related diseases among California’s priority groups.  Applicants are encouraged to address the social, structural, and addictive correlates of tobacco use and related disease, as well as educational and clinical interventions to reduce the deleterious effects from all forms of nicotine delivery systems across all age groups. Research from the social, behavioral, and public health sciences that provide evidence to battle nicotine addiction and the predatory marketing of the tobacco industry to diverse communities is needed. Partners in community settings including schools, clinics, community nonprofit organizations, and multi-unit housing sites are prime collaborators for this research effort. 

The program also aims to solicit proposals for research that will have a major impact in developing, implementing, or testing strategies to prevent, reduce, or eliminate racial or ethnic disparities in tobacco use or tobacco-related morbidity and mortality.  We encourage applications that conceptualize race as a social construct and use measures of race and ethnicity that allow for comparisons across studies, with an emphasis on the commercial, structural, and social inequities affecting the health of priority populations in California. Similarly, we encourage the use of innovative strategies for conceptualizing and measuring sexual and gender identity, geographic context, economic status, and other characteristics of individuals who experience tobacco-related health disparities. Research that allows for intersectional approaches in data analysis and interpretation is critical for producing research findings that reflect the lived experience of individuals affected by tobacco-related health disparities.  Research that is embedded in California communities, reflects the lived experiences of community members, and fosters community scientist training focused on tobacco prevention and control will ensure more rapid advances in this impact-driven scientific area. As such, TRDRP continues to solicit projects across the full spectrum of community engagement through Core Award mechanisms and Community-Partnered Participatory Research Award (CPPRA) mechanisms to support collaborative community-partnered investigative teams in the conduct of research that address issues prioritized by the community.

Examples of relevant research topics:  

• Health behavior change interventions that promote cessation of tobacco and nicotine products among all age groups including, but not limited to: multiple tobacco product use, flavored tobacco product use, synthetic nicotine products (e.g., nicotine pouches), heated tobacco, tobacco-cannabis co-use, and/or poly-substance use that includes tobacco; 
• Development and testing of new theoretical frameworks that advance our understanding of the benefits/limitations of culturally tailored tobacco prevention and treatment interventions compared to general population-based interventions with consideration of intersectional issues and structural determinants of health;   
• Research that elucidates the role of structural, commercial, and social determinants of health in shaping the tobacco epidemic facing priority populations in California – Research that develops strategies to reduce related tobacco-related health disparities;    
• Innovative use of virtual technologies to expand the reach and access of evidence-based or practice-informed tobacco prevention and cessation interventions focused on priority groups and rural areas of California;    
• Research that broadly develops surveillance tools to track social, behavioral, and commercial changes related to tobacco industry marketing strategies and the tobacco retail environment, including tobacco product characteristics such as addition of non-menthol cooling agents, that can worsen tobacco-related health disparities;   
• Implementation science research that can directly inform innovation in the provision of tobacco prevention and cessation services that addresses health insurance coverage issues and expands access to Californians with lower income levels and/or Medi-Cal enrollees; 
• Research that addresses practices, interventions, and policies in healthcare and public health settings to improve behavioral outcomes related to tobacco, such as quit attempts, abstinence rates, and initiation; 
• Machine learning methods and other artificial intelligence technologies that focus on economies of scale in health care systems are encouraged in implementation science-focused research applications;  
• Innovations in the measurement of social constructs and types of study designs available to examine and track changes in tobacco-related health disparity indicators over time. For example, innovations in the measurement of structural determinants and commercial determinants of health and study designs that include analysis with sufficient power to stratify by important sociodemographic characteristics for addressing tobacco-related health disparities (such as race/ethnicity, gender identity, LGBTQ+ identity, age, income, etc.) are critically needed in the field.  

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