UAMS’ Pebbles Fagan, Ph.D., Receives President’s Award from Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco
| Pebbles Fagan, Ph.D., MPH, a leading expert on tobacco-related health disparities at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), received the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco’s (SRNT) President’s Award.
Fagan was recognized by the organization due to her decades of scientific excellence and efforts to combat health inequities related to nicotine and tobacco use. She is the fifth recipient of the award in the society’s 28-year history.
“It is my great honor to bestow upon Dr. Fagan the 2022 SRNT Presidential Award in honor of her decades of work in nicotine and tobacco science and health equity,” said Megan Piper, Ph.D., Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco president and professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
“The President’s Award is not given out every year, but this year I wanted to culminate the SRNT’s work on racial equity by recognizing the preeminent leader in the field of nicotine and tobacco science and health equity,” said Piper.
Fagan is a professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Education in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at UAMS and director of the UAMS Center for the Study of Tobacco. She is director of research in the UAMS Office of Health Initiatives and Disparities Research and a member of the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute’s Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences Research Group. Fagan will co-lead the new NIH-funded Center for Research, Health and Social Justice – one of only 11 Multiple Chronic Disease (MCD) Centers funded in the United States.
Fagan also serves as director of the Contextual Knowledge Core in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center for the Study of Tobacco Products. She previously served as program director for the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center and as a health scientist in the Tobacco Control Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Fagan was a co-founder of the NCI’s Tobacco Research Network on Disparities (TReND), the first national research network designed to stimulate novel collaborative research in tobacco-related health disparities. Continuing the work of TReND, she cofounded the SRNT Health Disparities Network, which has developed webinars, papers and network activities to support nicotine and tobacco researchers of all races and ethnicities.
Fagan is a graduate of the University of Virginia. She earned a Master of Public Health degree from Tulane University and a doctorate in health education and community health from Texas A&M.
Fagan will formally accept the award at the society’s annual meeting in March in Baltimore. She will be the keynote speaker at the meeting’s Presidential Symposium.
Founded in 1994, the mission of SRNT is to stimulate the generation and dissemination of new knowledge concerning nicotine in all its manifestations, from molecular to societal. Today, SRNT has more than 1,000 members in more than 40 countries.
UAMS is the state’s only health sciences university, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a hospital; a main campus in Little Rock; a Northwest Arkansas regional campus in Fayetteville; a statewide network of regional campuses; and eight institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, Translational Research Institute, Institute for Digital Health & Innovation and the Institute for Community Health Innovation. UAMS includes UAMS Health, a statewide health system that encompasses all of UAMS’ clinical enterprise. UAMS is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 3,485 students, 915 medical residents and fellows, and seven dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 11,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS, its regional campuses, Arkansas Children’s, the VA Medical Center and Baptist Health. Visit www.uams.edu or uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube or Instagram.
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