May 28, 2025
Pharmaceutical companies have worked hard to protect their reputation by shifting blame for the opioid crisis away from themselves and onto individual patients. In the new article, “The Rise of Clinical Decision Support Algorithms in Pain Management, 2009–2024,” published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, CTCRE Fellow Dan Kabella, PhD looks at how digital tools like NarxCare play a key role in this.
NarxCare is a tool used in healthcare to predict the risks of opioid misuse, addiction, and overdose and to guide doctors’ decisions. These tools often put the focus on patients’ behavior instead of problems like aggressive marketing with the pharmaceutical companies. Using internal documents and public information, their research shows how these companies have pushed tools like NarxCare as proof they are managing the crisis. Instead of making real changes, these tools allow the opioid industry to define “legitimate” opioid use through careful prescribing and monitoring, while leaving the system that protects industry interests intact.
This article was co-aithored by CTCRE Fellowship Co-Director Dorie Apollonio, PhD, MPP, UCSF Professor Kelly Knight, PhD, and doctoral student Halle Young.
March 27, 2025
A recent publication by CTCRE fellow Allison Temourian, PhD, has been selected as the cover story for the March 2025 issue of Urban Science. Her paper, Citizen Science to Collect Tobacco Waste: Exploring the Usability of Two Protocols, evaluates the feasibility of two tobacco product waste protocols using a community-based approach. The study highlights the impact of adaptable methodologies that not only engage the public in meaningful scientific participation, but also empower local communities. This collaborative approach also serves as a model for integrating public participation.
Explore the full publication here.
2024 Surgeon General's Report- Eliminating Tobacco-Related Disease and Death: Addressing Disparities
November 26, 2024
On November 19th 2024, the Surgeon General released a new report titled Eliminating Tobacco-Related Disease and Death: Addressing Disparities, the 35th tobacco-related Surgeon General’s Report published since 1964. Pamela Ling, MD, MPH, Director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, and Maya Vijayaraghavan, MD, MAS, Fellowship Co-Director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, were contributing authors on this report.
Eliminating Tobacco-Related Disease and Death: Addressing Disparities assesses health disparities related to tobacco use. While the US has made progress in reducing tobacco use in the overall population, advancements have not been equally distributed across all US population groups.
Disparities in commercial tobacco product use, exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke, exposure to marketing of tobacco products and smoking-related health outcomes persist by race and ethnicity, level of income, level of education, sexual orientation, gender identity, type of occupation, geography, and behavioral health status.
The full report can be read online here.
November 25, 2024
Several people have asked us to collect all the public comments that we have submitted to the FDA. We have also added comments submitted to other agencies on tobacco issues. We will update this posting as new comments are submitted. This post is current as of November 25, 2024.
November 2024: Advancing Smoking Cessation: FDA and NIH Priorities
January 31, 2024
Greetings and Happy New Year everyone!
We are very happy to announce a partnership between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) resulting in a new acquisition of roughly 4 million internal documents from the State of North Carolina’s $40 million settlement with electronic cigarette maker JUUL Labs:
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/collections/juul-labs-collection/
The first 280,000 documents are now available online as part of the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents and we plan to publish the remaining documents monthly, concluding the project in 2025.
See the UNC announcement for more information on the partnership: https://uncnews.unc.edu/2024/01/31/university-collaboration-to-create-public-depository-of-nearly-4-million-documents-associated-with-north-carolina-vaping-settlement/
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/