Medicine

Nhung Nguyen received her PhD in Epidemiology from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX, and her BS in Pharmacy from Hanoi University of Pharmacy, Vietnam. Her dissertation was among the first to examine smoking prevalence, nicotine dependence, and related factors among HIV-positive people in Vietnam. Her research interests include application of technology and data science in smoking cessation intervention among smokers with polysubstance use, and in smoking prevention among youth and young adults. 

I am a health geographer interested in qualitative and mixed methods approaches to understanding relationships between people’s everyday environments and behaviors related to health and wellbeing. During my fellowship at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF, I am researching place-embedded social practices of smoking within marginalized groups, such as young LGBTQI adults, in order to better understand the persistence of smoking within these groups and inform the design and effectiveness of tobacco control efforts.

Research program includes clinical and basic science approaches to study the effects of cigarette smoke on lung inflammation. He is also the Principal Investigator on the NIH-funded Spiromics Project and a Co-investigator on the COPD Clinical Research Network. Dr. Woodruff received his B.A, from Wesleyan University in 1989, received his M.D. degree from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1993, and completed Internal Medicine residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

My research focuses on tobacco use in vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on interventions with the homeless population. My population-based research includes the analysis of cross-sectional and longitudinal data, including the analysis of national data, to examine the use of novel tobacco products and the efficacy of tobacco control policies on reducing tobacco use in low-income populations.

The focus of my research program in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology, as shown in the image below, is the utility and evaluation of biological markers (biomarkers) of tobacco use and exposure for epidemiology, risk assessment, product regulation, and identification of susceptibility factors.

Research has centered on hospital-based and out-patient clinical trials of smoking cessation. Completed studies include: Transdermal Nicotine Therapy for Hospitalized Smokers and Bupropion for Hospital-Based Smoking Cessation.    Dr.