Grantee: Erin Rogers, DrPH

Erin Rogers, DrPH

Organization:

• New York University School of Medicine

Current Title
Associate Professor of Population Health

Describe your scientific identity.
I am a public health scientist conducting research on strategies for overcoming structural and social barriers to treating tobacco use.

What are your research interests?
I am interested in strategies for overcoming structural and stigma-related barriers to tobacco treatment for people with psychiatric diagnoses, as well as strategies for reducing financial distress as a barrier to tobacco treatment engagement and cessation among people with low income.

What is the significance of your current research project?
My current R37 grant is testing the impacts of an intervention that integrates financial coaching and referral to financial empowerment services into smoking cessation coaching for people with low income who smoke.

What motivated you to work in tobacco control research?
Many people in my family smoked cigarettes when I was growing up and I saw how devastating the health, financial, and social consequences of smoking can have on a family.

Describe something that had a profound influence on your program of research or scientific interests (an "ah-ha!" moment).
While working as a smoking cessation research coordinator in safety-net clinics, I realized that traditional approaches to treating tobacco use were ignoring the higher-level determinants of health that were making it difficult for patients to engage in treatment and quit smoking.

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