People

The Center faculty come from all four UCSF schools and conduct research and teaching in every aspect of tobacco control, from efforts by the tobacco industry to manipulate international politics to the molecular biology of nicotine addiction.

 

Donald Abrams, MD

Professor Emeritus of Medicine
Medicine

Donald I. Abrams, M.D. is an integrative oncologist at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. He was Chief of Hematology-Oncology at Zuckerberg San Francisco General from 2003-2017. He graduated from Brown University in 1972 and from the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1977. After completing an Internal Medicine residency at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in San Francisco, he became a fellow in Hematology-Oncology at UCSF in 1980. During his fellowship, Dr.

Natalie Alizaga, PhD

LBNL Default

Natalie M. Alizaga, PhD received her doctorate in Applied Social Psychology from The George Washington University in Washington DC, a MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a BS in Health Science from San Jose State University.  Her research interests focus on elucidating the psychosocial factors related to tobacco cessation and cancer prevention for underserved populations, including barriers and facilitators to routine health care and screening.

Stacey Anderson, PhD

Assistant Professor
Social Behavioral Sciences

Dr. Anderson's  research interests lie at the intersection of public health policy and social cognition.  She investigates marketing strategies that tap implicit constructs of self and perceptions of others, pair brand identities with personal identities, and encourage consumption of products detrimental to individual and public health. 

Department: Social and Behavioral Sciences
 

Professional Activities: 
Reviewer for the following:

Dorie Apollonio, PhD, MPP

Professor
Clinical Pharmacy
Dr. Dorie Apollonio is a Professor of health policy in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco focusing on tobacco control and policy making. Her research considers the role of scientific evidence and interest group lobbying in decision making on public health. This work uses multiple data sources including internal industry documents, campaign finance reports, administrative datasets, and interviews, and relies on both qualitative and quantitative methods to identify how policy affecting public health is made.

Mehrdad Arjomandi, MD

Professor
Medicine

Dr. Arjomandi grew up in Ahvaz, a small city in Southwestern Iran, and moved to the United States in 1986 in the aftermath of Iranian revolution (1979), Iraq's invasion of Iran (1980-88), and his family displacement inside Iran (1980-83). When in California, he began his higher education at Los Angeles Pierce College before transferring to University of California San Diego in 1988, where he obtained a bachelor degree in molecular biology and completed a senior honors thesis in developmental biology in Dr. Richard Firtel’s lab.

John Balmes, MD

Professor
Medicine

Dr. Balmes received his MD degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1976. After internal medicine training at Mount Sinai and pulmonary subspecialty, occupational medicine, and research training at Yale, he joined the faculty of USC in 1982. He joined the faculty at UCSF in 1986 and is currently Professor in the Divisions of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG).

Neal Benowitz, MD

Professor Emeritus
Medicine

Neal Benowitz has been involved in patient care and conducting research at SFGH since 1973. His research focus is on the human pharmacology of nicotine in relation to pathogenesis of and individual differences in vulnerability to tobacco-related disease, and the use of pharmacologic data as a basis for public health policies to prevent and reduce such disease. He has also studied the human pharmacolgy and toxicology of cannabis products.

Dharma Bhatta, PhD

Access Extension

Dharma Bhatta, PhD received his doctorate in Epidemiology from the Prince of Songkla University, Thailand in 2016. He is an epidemiologist and public health expert/researcher, with over ten years of experiences in academia and public health research in developing countries. Dr.

Stella Bialous, RN, DrPH, FAAN

Associate Professor

Dr. Stella Bialous’ research focuses on the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, tobacco industry monitoring and building nurses’ capacity for tobacco control nationally and internationally. Dr. Bialous has consulted with the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative for over 15 years.  In 2003, she received the American Legacy Foundation’s Sybill G.

Paul Blanc, MD, MSPH

Professor
Medicine

Dr. Paul D. Blanc MD MSPH is Professor of Medicine and holds the Endowed Chair in Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, where he has been on faculty since 1988. His research interests are in work-related inhalational exposures.

Candice Bowling, JD, MPA

Access Extension

Candice M.

Esteban G. Burchard, MD, MPH

Professor
Bioengineering

The overall goal of my research group is to identify and characterize genetic, environmental and social factors that predispose to asthma and modify drug response (pharmacogenetics). In addition, we are interested in how racially-specific genetic diffs. modify disease and response to treatment. My major scientific interests center on identifying genetic risk factors for common diseases and traits (e.g. asthma and drug response) in racial/ethnically mixed populations. I am fascinated with how racial/ethnic background influences health and risk of disease.

Pages