MEDIA ADVISORY: Smoking Cessation Experts at Yale Available to Discuss New Law on Tobacco Products

With the U.S. Senate’s historic passage of legislation giving the FDA broad new powers over tobacco products, smoking cessation and addiction experts from the Women’s Health Research at Yale program and Yale School of Medicine are available for media interviews about the science of tobacco dependency.

The U.S. House also is expected to adopt legislation and President Barack Obama, who has struggled himself to quit smoking, has said he would sign the bill into law.

The Senate legislation, backed by hundreds of health advocacy groups as a historic breakthrough, would give the FDA sweeping authority to regulate the manufacture and marketing of cigarettes, curb advertisements, and require stronger package warnings. The FDA also would have authority to inspect cigarette makers, which would have to register and provide a list of the products they make.

Yale experts on smoking and smoking cessation include:

Women’s Health Research at Yale Director Carolyn M. Mazure, professor of psychiatry and psychology and associate dean for faculty affairs at Yale School of Medicine, is an expert on depression and addictive behaviors. She is the Principal Investigator for the Sex-Specific Factors Core of the NIH-funded Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center at Yale, which was created to help people quit smoking. She can be reached at carolyn.mazure@yale.edu or at 203-764-6600.

Women’s Health Research at Yale investigator Sherry McKee, associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and director of the Yale Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory, is an expert on behavioral factors related to tobacco addiction. She can also speak about gender differences in smoking cessation, and why women find it harder to quit smoking than men. She may be reached at sherry.mckee@yale.edu or office: 203-737-3529 or cell: 203-848-5322.

Stephanie O’Malley, professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and a principal investigator for the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center at Yale. The overall aim of the center is to reduce exposure to tobacco by focusing research on smokers most resistant to current treatments for smoking cessation. The targeted risk factors are heavy alcohol use, depressive disorders, and female gender. O’Malley may be reached at stephanie.omalley@yale.edu or office 203-974-7606 or cell: 203-500-5889.

Women’s Health Research at Yale, established in 1998, is a self-supporting, interdisciplinary research program that focuses on women’s health and gender differences in health and disease. Research supported by the program addresses some of the most pressing health concerns of women today, including breast and ovarian cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, depression, effects of hormones and addictive behaviors. More information about the program can be found at www.yalewhr.org