Jim Thrasher, Ph.D.
Jim Thrasher is a Professor in the Department of Health Promotion, Education & Behavior in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. For almost two decades, he also has been a Researcher and Visiting Professor at the Mexican National Institute of Public Health, where much of his research is based. His research projects assess the effects of media and policy on eating and tobacco use across countries. In recognition of his research productivity and impact on science and policy – both nationally and internationally – he received the World Health Organization’s World No Tobacco Day Award in 2016. He is also on the Food and Drug Administration’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, which provides information and recommendations to the FDA Commissioner around tobacco product regulation.
 
Minji Kim, Ph.D.
Minji Kim is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Promotion, Education & Behavior. Her research focuses on targeted and tailored health communication. Recent projects include assessing impact of targeted tobacco marketing messages on young people, examining tobacco-related social media content, and developing and testing culturally targeted anti-tobacco messages for Asian Americans.

Desiree Vidaña-Pérez, Ph.D.
Dr. Vidaña-Pérez is a postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Health Promotion Education, and Behavior. Her research interests include exploring the factors associated to non-daily smoking among adults, the use of electronic cigarettes and other nicotine products among youth, incorporating a gender perspective and novel methodologies. Her recent work has focused mainly on identifying the factors associated to use of electronic cigarettes among adolescents in Latin America. She has worked with Dr. Thrasher since 2022.

Sam Petillo, B.S.
Samantha Petillo is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior. Her interests include tobacco control and communication, with specific interest in evaluating an innovative cigarette stick labeling policy in Canada. Additionally, she has interests in examining stress and tobacco use among military service members.

 

Charity Ntansah, MPH
Charity Ntansah is a doctoral candidate in in the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior. She is conducting research on ways to leverage communication to promote healthy behaviors like smoking cessation among minority and vulnerable groups. Her dissertation research focuses on how to effectively communicate a reduced nicotine policy to people who use little cigars and cigarillos.

Adebusola Ogunnaike, MPH
Adebusola Ogunnaike is a doctoral student in in the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior. She is passionate about reducing Non-Communicable Diseases, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Prior to enrolling at the UofSC, Adebusola worked on tobacco control issues in the Nigerian Ministry of Health and led tobacco control advocacy trainings in several African countries.

Emily Loud, MPH
Emily Loud is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior. Her interests include tobacco control, health communication, and global health, with specific interests in health literacy and risk perceptions associated with tobacco use. Before joining the HPEB department as an MPH student, Emily served in the Peace Corps in Rwanda from 2016-2018.

 

Lizeth Cruz Jiménez, MPH
Lizeth Cruz Jiménez holds a Bachelor's degree in Social Psychology and a Master's in Health Sciences in Mexico (INSP). Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate in Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior at the University of South Carolina. She has been actively involved in the planning, developing, and disseminating research projects related to tobacco product consumption patterns in Mexico in collaboration with the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico (INSP). Lizeth is particularly interested in designing and evaluating programs using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches.

Emily Hackworth, MPH
Emily E. Hackworth is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior at the University of South Carolina. Before joining the HPEB department as an MPH student in 2019, Emily served in the Peace Corps in Rwanda from 2016-2018.Emily’s research interests include tobacco control policies and communication, nicotine, mental health, and youth vaping. Her dissertation research aims to examine the relationship between mental health and nicotine use among adolescents over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aishwarya Khemkar
I am a first year PhD student at the department of Health Promotion, Education and Behavior. My research interests are to understand the initiation of tobacco use, Smokelesss tobacco, and Tobacco harm perceptions

 

Liyan Xiong, MS
Liyan Xiong is a Doctoral Student in the Department of Biostatistics. She supports the team’s analyses through ecological momentary assessment. This work has some common with her professional interests in longitudinal data analysis, statistical methods in mixed effect model, and statistical programming.

Dai Fang, MS
Dai Fang is a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Biostatistics with a Masters of Science in Biostatistics. Dai’s research involves conducting statistical analyses and developing manuscripts using data from the International Food Policy Study (IFPS). He is particularly focused on comparing the implementation of mandatory front-of-package (FOP) warning labels in Mexico with nutrition facts label (NFL) enhancements in the United States. Dai’s dissertation centers on discrete choice experiments, addressing opt-out issues, and he has developed novel methods to fully utilize opt-out information, enhancing the conclusiveness of research results derived from real data.

Winnie Ni, BSPH
Winnie Ni is a Masters student in the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior. Her research interests include tobacco control, communication, and vaping behavior and cessation among young adults. Additionally, she is also interested in working with disadvantaged and vulnerable populations as reflected with her internship at Darkness to Light focusing on child sexual abuse prevention.

University of South Carolina

Rachel Davis, MPH, Ph.D.
Rachel Davis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Promotion, Education and Behavior.  Her research uses qualitative and quantitative methods to better understand how culture, race, and ethnicity influence health communication and survey methodology, with a particular focus on working with Latinx and African American populations.  Her research with Dr. Thrasher’s team had evaluated the effectiveness of cigarette warning labels and cessation messages across diverse populations, as well as international research on the health equity impact of food policies. 

James Hardin, Ph.D.
James Hardin is a Professor of Biostatistics whose research involves correlated data analysis, including generalized estimating equations and mixed models. He also actively researches discrete data regression models including bivariate outcomes for which joint probabilities may be estimated using copula functions.  He has worked with Dr. Thrasher on a variety of NIH-funded projects.

Sei-hill Kim, Ph.D.
Sei-Hill Kim is a Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications whose research interests are at the intersection of the media and social issues, particularly as they relate to public health, science, politics, and public relations. He examines how these issues are presented in the media and the effects these representations have on key audience segments.  His work with Dr. Thrasher has focused on media coverage of tobacco policies, including regulation of novel tobacco products, in the context of the US and South Korea.

Andrea Henderson, Ph.D.
Andrea K. Henderson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology.  Her research focuses on the role of religion among minoritized populations, especially Black Americans, in the face of major life events, stress and racial discrimination. She has been studying how religiosity may explain the differential impact of tobacco control policies across minority and majority groups in the US. 

 

National Institute of Public Health, Mexico

Edna Arillo Santillán, MS
Edna Arillo-Santillán is a Research Professor in the Department of Tobacco Research at the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) in Mexico.  For 20 years, she has been conducting research to evaluate school and federal policies to prevent tobacco use in Mexico, with a particular focus on tobacco warning label policy.

Rosibel Rodríguez-Bolaños, MD, MS, Ph.D.
Rosibel Rodríguez-Bolaños, PhD is a Research Professor in the Department of Tobacco Research at the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) in Mexico.  Her tobacco control research takes a gender perspective on adolescents and adult smokers in Mexico, including using text messages to promote smoking cessation.  Her current research focuses on smoking, e-cigarette use, and other substance use among sexual minorities in Mexico.

Katia Gallegos-Carrillo, Ph.D.
Katia Gallegos-Carrillo is an investigator in the Epidemiology and Health Services Research Unit of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS). Her research assesses and develop interventions that reduce non-communicable disease by addressing key behavioral risk factors like physical activity, diet, and smoking.  She is particularly interested in binational approaches that compare Mexico and the US.

Inti Barrientos-Gutierrez, MBA
Inti Barrientos-Gutierrez is a Researcher in the Center for Research in Evaluation and Surveys of the Mexican National Institute of Public Health (INSP). His research is focused on product placement and advertising of tobacco products, nicotine consumption in adolescents, and new forms of nicotine consumption.

Lizeth Cruz Jiménez, MS
Liz Cruz-Jiménez is a Researcher in the Center for Research in Evaluation and Surveys of the Mexican National Institute of Public Health (INSP). Lizeth has participated in the planning, development, and dissemination of research projects related to the consumption patterns of tobacco products and the sexual health of adolescents. She is a special interest in preventive health and also in the design and evaluation of programs with quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodological approaches.