Marketing and Prevention

The tobacco industry's marketing tactics for selling cigarettes and other products to adults and children, as well as effective counter-marking public health campaigns.
  • Analysis of Tobacco Industry Documents

    The tobacco industry is like an intelligent and aggressive ever-evolving pathogen that accounts for one-third of all cancer and nearly two-thirds of heart disease among people under 55.  To reduce this burden of disease requires understanding how the tobacco industry maintains a social and policy environment favorable to smoking. To understand a pathogen, one might study its genetic code. To understand the tobacco industry, we have a written record of its research and decision making process in the form of over 62 million pages of previously secret tobacco industry documents now available at the UCSF Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. This research uses this unique resource to understand how the tobacco industry works to shape the environment, and what public health authorities and advocates can do to anticipate and counter the tobacco industry’s adaptive strategies (legal, political, scientific, propagandistic) to frustrate and subvert smoking prevention and cessation programs.

    Stanton Glantz, PhD
    Professor of Medicine
  • Risk And Benefit Perceptions in the Use of Conventional and Emerging Tobacco Products Among Older Smokers

    The goal of this project is to elucidate older adults’ risk perceptions of conventional, new and emerging tobacco products, and e-cigarettes, how these perceptions are affected by pro- and anti-tobacco messages, and how these perceptions affect tobacco use behaviors. The results will be important first steps to characterize the tobacco consumer decision making model as it applies to older adults, an important group with distinct motivations, influences, and economic impact.

    Janine Cataldo, PhD RN
    Assistant Professor, Department of Physiological Nursing - Gerontology
  • Adolescent Decision Making About Tobacco Use

    This research includes a qualitative study exploring adolescent decision making around tobacco use and a prospective study of the relationship between risk perception and teen tobacco use.  The ultimate goal of this work is to determine the extent to which adolescents' perceptions of smoking-related long-and short-term risks and benefits influence their initiation, continuation and cessation of smoking.

    Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, PhD
    Professor
  • Tobacco Industry Marketing Strategies Targeting Young Adults

    This research examines previously secret tobacco industry documents describing how and why the tobacco industry sells cigarettes to young adults. The research focuses on lessons learned from tobacco industry marketing research on smoking behavior, and reaching young adults through their lifestyle and social activities.

    Pamela Ling, MD MPH
    Associate Professor In Residence
  • Tobacco Industry Responses to Public Health Campaigns

    This project uses tobacco industry documents to explore how the tobacco industry has responded to public health and other campaigns that focus attention on the behaviors of the tobacco industry, and to develop a resource for advocates designing such campaigns.  

    Elizabeth Smith, PhD
    Associate Adjunct Professor
  • The Role of Emotion in Smoking-Related Attitudes and Beliefs

    The goal of this project is to study how emotions such as fear and anxiety, might impact adolescents' and young adults' beliefs about smoking-related outcomes and their intentions to smoke or quit smoking.

    Anna Song, PhD
    Assistant Professor, University of California, Merced School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts
  • Marketing tobacco products to women

    Dr. Anderson studies how marketing for tobacco products targets consumers' psychosocial needs that are unrelated to smoking--particularly women, health-concerned smokers, and young trend-setters--and implications for public health policy.

    Stacey Anderson, PhD
    Assistant Adjunct Professor