STRONGER Scholars: A Research Education Program to Reduce Tobacco-Related Cancer Disparities and Improve Health Equity
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Global Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 306
Special Issue Editors
Interests: cancer prevention; health disparities; health equity; implementation science; research training and professional development; social determinants of health; tobacco control; tobacco use and cessation
Interests: community-based interventions; epidemiology; health disparities; health education and promotion; health equity; health policy; law and medicine; public health; social determinants of health
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable and premature disease, disability, and death in the US. Training a workforce to understand, conduct, and evaluate tobacco addictions research is critical to fostering innovation in tobacco use prevention and treatment and enabling rapid translation into evidence-based interventions utilized in routine healthcare delivery. Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R25DA059907; 4/01/24-3/31/29), the Supporting Tobacco-Related Ongoing Education and Research (STRONGER) Scholar Program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (https://www.strongerscholars.com/) provides research and education experiences to prepare 35 medical students (national catchment area) and 16 clinically focused doctoral trainees (i.e., psychology and social work; local catchment area) for careers as clinician scientists addressing tobacco/nicotine addiction in research and practice. The STRONGER Scholar Program solicits a diverse applicant pool and aims to build Scholars’ competency in research and the responsible conduct thereof through participation in professional development activities and a mentored research project. This Special Issue intends to disseminate information about the program and its research; it is open to papers authored or co-authored by STRONGER Scholars addressing tobacco dependence, prevention, and treatment. Given that disease, disability, and death attributable to tobacco use are often concentrated among marginalized and minoritized groups, resulting in myriad health inequities, papers focused on reducing tobacco-related health inequities are particularly encouraged.
Dr. Lorraine R. Reitzel
Dr. Brian J. Carter
Guest Editors
Publisher’s Notice
As stated above, the central purpose of this Special Issue is to present research from the STRONGER Scholars Program. Given this purpose, the Guest Editors’ contribution to this Special Issue may be greater than outlined in MDPI’s Special Issue guidelines (https://www.mdpi.com/special_issues_guidelines). The Editorial Office and Editor-in-Chief of IJERPH has approved this Topic and MDPI’s standard manuscript editorial processing procedure (https://www.mdpi.com/editorial_process) will be applied to all submissions. As per our standard procedure, Guest Editors are excluded from participating in the editorial process for their submission and/or for submissions from persons with whom a potential conflict of interest may exist. More details on MDPI’s Conflict of Interest policy for reviewers and editors can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/ethics#_bookmark22.
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Keywords
- cancer prevention
- cigarette
- e-cigarette
- health equity
- mentored research
- professional development
- public health
- research training
- smokeless tobacco
- smoking
- tobacco cessation
- tobacco use
- vaping
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