Massachusetts General Hospital

Doug Levy, PhD - Principal Investigator

Investigator, Tobacco Research & Treatment Center;
Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Levy’s research examines how policies and interventions in the spheres of public health, healthcare finance, and health services can support prevention to improve population health. A major application of this overall research agenda is the study of policies to reduce the harms of tobacco use. Dr. Levy’s research on tobacco is wide-ranging, covering tobacco policy implementation, smoke-free housing, the health consequences of tobacco smoke exposure, the effects of insurance coverage of tobacco cessation treatments, the economic determinants and consequences of tobacco use, as well as the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of smoking cessation programs.

Krishna Reddy, MD, MS

Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Krishna Reddy is a pulmonary and critical care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research interests include tobacco, HIV, and tuberculosis, both individually and in combination. He applies methods of simulation modeling, epidemiology, and cost-effectiveness analysis to study clinical and economic outcomes in the US and in other countries. The goal of his research is to provide evidence- and model-based approaches to clinical decision-making and public health policy. Dr. Reddy earned an MD from Harvard Medical School and a Master of Science in Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Eden Evins, MD, MPH

Director, Center for Addiction Medicine

Dr. Evins completed her residency in adult psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and Longwood Psychiatry Residency Training Program, where she was Chief Resident. She conducted a fellowship in molecular biology at the Mailman Research Center of McLean Hospital and a second fellowship in clinical research at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Evins' research interests include pharmacotherapy for nicotine dependence, negative symptoms of schizophrenia, co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders and cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia. Additionally, she is studying the effects of various medications on reward responsiveness and other potential biomarkers of vulnerability to addiction and of treatment response. 

David Cheng, PhD

Instructor in Investigation, Biostatistics
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School

 David Cheng is a biostatistican at the MGH Biostatistics Center and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at HMS. He collaborates with investigators at MGB on clinical and health services research, including work in cancer screening, treatment selection for autoimmune diseases, and tobacco control policy. His methodological research involves developing approaches to enable comparative effectiveness research in complex real-world data settings.

Lindsay Kephart, PhD, MPH

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Massachusetts General Hospital

Lindsay is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Health Policy Research Center. Lindsay joined the study in June 2024, bringing her experience as an epidemioloigst in the Massachusetts Department of Public Heatlh Tobacco Prevention and Control Program. She received her Master of Public Health from the Tufts School of Medicine with a concentration in Epidemiology and Biostatistics and her Doctorate from the Harvard T.H. Chan Population Health Sciences Program.

Boram Lee, PhD

 Boram Lee worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Health Policy Research Center and the Tobacco Research & Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her primary research interests include socioeconomic disparities, tobacco use and mental health among low-income populations, tobacco control policy, and causal inference. She earned her PhD in Health Behavior from the School of Public Health at Indiana University. She received her BPH and MA in Health Education and Management, and BA in Social Welfare from Ewha Woman’s University in South Korea.

Cameron Reitan, MPH

Cameron recently recieved her Master’s of Public Health, Health Promotion and Policy from the University of Missouri-Columbia. While at the University, Cameron was a student research assistant at Eliminate Tobacco Use Missouri Initiative. She was a member and leader of multiple teams that worked on cessation, prevention, and policy on Missouri’s campus and statewide. Cameron joined the VAPOR study in January 2023 on the state interview team. This study has been her first introduction to qualitative research.

Victoria Lopez

Victoria is a recent graduate from Tufts University, double majoring in Community Health and Psychology originally from Houston, Texas. Her past research experience includes working on a biostatistics project at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, working as a research intern at HITLab and working on vaccine policy research at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. In this project, she is primarily involved in coding transcripts of interviews with state employees about how they/their agencies implement e-cigarette policies.

Ginny Chadwick, MPH, MA

Ginny Chadwick is a doctoral student at Brandeis University in the Behavioral Health concentration and NIAAA pre-doctoral trainee. Her focus is on tobacco-free campus policies, access to cessation services, and screening of tobacco use dependence in EMR systems. Since 2013, she has worked on sales restriction laws for tobacco products, written ordinances and statutes, and contributed to the national model language. Her research includes age of sale, penalty structures, decriminalization of purchase, use and possession, and preemption of local laws. Chadwick serves as Political Action Chair for the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs section of the American Public Health Association.  

Shari Kessel-Schneider, MSPH

 Shari Kessel Schneider, an expert in adolescent health and school health, advances knowledge of effective programs and practices to improve the physical and mental well-being of youth. She leads initiatives focused on survey research, program evaluation, intervention design, and training and technical assistance. Her content expertise in adolescent health and risk behaviors includes bullying and cyberbullying, social media use, substance misuse, and mental health. She leads EDC’s MetroWest Adolescent Health Survey and provides technical assistance to school districts in using student survey data to inform educational efforts, prevention programming, and policymaking. Schneider holds an MSPH from the Harvard University School of Public Health.

Candace M. Kyles, EdD, MA

Candace M. Kyles, EDC research associate, has experience in educational research, data collection and analysis, organizational and program evaluation, K–12 education, and higher education. Kyles also has expertise in culturally responsive and relevant pedagogy and faith-based education. Trained in culturally responsive and equitable evaluation through the American Evaluation Association Graduate Diversity Internship program, she has cultivated her skill set in equity-based evaluation and research, particularly for marginalized communities. Kyles advances multiple initiatives that focus on improving educational and health outcomes. She contributes to EDC’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate Evaluation Capacity Building Conference project. She also collaborates on several projects that focus on innovative approaches to promoting educational equity and behavioral and public health. Kyles holds an EdD in Curriculum & Instruction at Loyola University Chicago, an MA in Systematic Theology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and a BS in Economics from Northern Illinois University.

Cat Buechler, MPA

Cat Buechler, an EDC research assistant, has expertise in quantitative, qualitative, and academic research. She also has experience in data collection, analysis, visualization, and evaluation. Drawing on her analysis skills, she ensures accurate data are used to inform and advise key audiences. Cat has experience teaching humanities to high schoolers and working to identify strategies to support public schools in implementing competency-based education practices to ensure the success of all students. Cat holds an MPA in Public Policy Analysis from The Bush School at Texas A&M University and a BA in History from Texas A&M University.

Tracey Desovich

Tracy has more than 30 years of experience in substance misuse prevention and public health. In addition to working with CSPS for the past eight years, she provides technical assistance to Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia as part of the Regional Education Laboratory-Appalachia team to support the Cross-State Collaborative to Support Schools in the Opioid Crisis project. Before joining EDC, Tracy directed two regional technical assistance centers: the Greater Boston Center for Healthy Communities and the Southeast Center for Healthy Communities. For 12 years she developed, implemented, and evaluated prevention services for students at the University of Connecticut and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Areas of expertise include community health assessment, strategic planning, community organizing, evaluation, leadership development, harm reduction, using data to mobilize change, and positive youth development. Tracy is a certified prevention specialist.

Jessica Liu, PhD, MPH

 Jessica Liu is a Population Health Sciences doctoral student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Prior to her studies at Harvard School of Public Health, Jessica completed her Master’s in Public Health at Yale School of Public Health, where she focused her research interests on substance use in adolescents and prevention education. Through her doctoral studies, Jessica hopes to continue her focus on tobacco research and expand more on marijuana products and social media messaging.

Gina Kruse, MD, MPH

Associate Professor, Univeristy of Colorado School of Medicine

Gina Kruse, MD, MPH is a clinician investigator studying tobacco and cancer prevention in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Dr. Kruse’s research uses mixed methods approaches to examine technology-based interventions to improve the delivery of preventive services in underserved populations at risk for tobacco-related illness in settings in the US and internationally. She completed Internal Medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, a Harvard Medical School General Internal Medicine research fellowship, an MPH in Clinical Effectiveness from the Harvard School of Public Health and a post-doctoral fellowship in Cancer Prevention from the Harvard School of Public Health. 

Nancy Rigotti, MD

Director, Tobacco Research and Treatment Center;
Professor, Harvard Medical School

 Nancy Rigotti, MD, is an internationally known expert in tobacco use, tobacco cessation, and tobacco control public policy. Trained as a general internist, she is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Past President of both the Society of General Internal Medicine and the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco. Dr. Rigotti founded and directs the Tobacco Research and Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. She was a member of panel that wrote the landmark 2018  National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Health (NASEM) report, Public Health Consequences of E-cigarettes and is a co-author of the Cochrane Collaboration’s living systematic review of Electronic Cigarettes for Smoking Cessation.  She is conducting trials to assess the feasibility and impact of switching older adults and adults in treatment for substance use disorder who smoke to e-cigarettes for harm reduction. 

Randi Schuster, PhD

Associate Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Schuster is a licensed clinical psychologist. She received her BA from the University of Maryland, College Park and her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2014. In graduate school, she was funded by a NIDA National Research Service Award to study the cognitive effects of cannabis and tobacco use among at-risk young adults using ecological momentary assessment. Her research focuses on examining the utility of contingency management interventions in promoting cannabis abstinence as well as the reversibility of cognitive deficits during 30 days of cannabis discontinuation among high school-aged adolescents

Abra Jeffers, PhD, MS, MPhil

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Massachusetts General Hospital

 Abra Jeffers is a Data Analyst at Massachusetts General Hospital focusing on tobacco control. Her recent postdoctoral research at the UCSF Tobacco Center focused on cannabis, and she has prior experience with smoking cessation interventions at the VA. Dr. Jeffers completed her PhD and MS at Stanford University in Management Science & Engineering with a dissertation in epidemiology, an MPhil at University of Cambridge, Judge Business School in Management Science, and a BA and BS in Chemistry and Economics at Michigan State University.

Natalie Smith, PhD, MS

Research Associate, Harvard School of Public Health

Natalie's work aims to advance public health by generating tools and evidence to inform program and policy decision making. Her research program emphasizes applying a variety of decision science methods such as stated preference methods, economic evaluation, simulation modeling, and other decision analysis approaches. She is currently funded by a National Cancer Institute K99/R00 to study state vaping policy decision making and develop tools to support tobacco control policy prioritization.

Maeve Stover

Maeve Stover is currently a Clinical Research Assistant with the Health Policy Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. She received her BS in Public Health and Nutrition from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2023. During her undergraduate experience, she was involved in multiple research projects that intersected public policy and health promotion within the field of nutrition and food justice. She is currently pursuing her MPH as a part-time student at Boston University’s Epidemiology and Biostatistics program, with concentrations on chronic disease prevention and women’s health.

Education Development Center

Alumni

Kim Dash, PhD, MPH

Kim Dash, principal research scientist, develops, evaluates, and promotes the use of evidence-informed public health interventions. Her research interests include population-based substance misuse and violence prevention solutions that consider social determinants of health. Dash currently serves as PI for the MetroWest Adolescent Health Study, a comprehensive and biennial survey of youth health outcomes and related risk and protective factors. She also is or has been an investigator on several research studies examining trauma and help seeking; and has extensive experience in the area of youth and young adult risk behaviors, managing federally-funded research projects to develop and test innovative parent education and school-community interventions to reduce youth substance misuse, violence, and risky sexual behavior; developing innovative curricula that promotes healthy decision-making; and evaluating programs designed to reduce underage drinking, and meet children’s social and emotional needs. An expert in evaluation, Dash uses qualitative and quantitative methods to assess public health program and policy implementation and effectiveness. She holds an MPH from the University of North Carolina and a PhD in Child, Youth, and Family Policy from Brandeis University.

Yvonne Chien

Yvonne Chien was a Clinical Research Coordinator with the Health Policy Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. She received her BA in Sociology and Biochemistry and Cell Biology from Rice University, where she pursued independent research in minority health disparities with the Department of Sociology Population Health Lab. Her previous work focused on the long-term behavioral health implications of adverse childhood experiences in sexual and gender minorities, with an emphasis on substance use and policy evaluation. She is interested in addressing child and adolescent health disparities through evidence-based policy interventions. 

Sydney Goldberg MBE, J.D. Candidate

Sydney Goldberg joined MGH as a full-time research assistant in 2020, working on a variety of projects mostly related to smoke-free public housing policies. While working full-time, she assisted with writing and submitting the earlier versions of the VAPOR grant. She stayed on working part time on the VAPOR project to assist with interview-coding while completing her final year of law school at Northeastern University School of Law. Sydney graduated in 2019 from the University of Rochester with a Bachelor of Arts in Bioethics and from Harvard Medical School’s Master of Bioethics Program in 2020.