HOP Faculty Member Selected to Serve on AAP Tobacco Consortium

Ramzi Salloum, Ph.D., was selected to serve on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Tobacco Consortium for the 2017-2018 term.

Salloum, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Outcomes & Policy and a faculty member at the Institute for Child Health Policy, is a health economist who specializes in cancer prevention and tobacco control. He is currently working with the OneFlorida Clinical Research Consortium’s Cancer Control Alliance to scale up a tobacco prevention project aimed at adolescents in pediatric clinics across Florida. The project involves improving the capacity of clinics to screen and counsel their adolescent patients on tobacco use with evidence-based approaches.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is a professional membership organization representing some 64,000 pediatricians, and child health specialists nationwide. The organization is dedicated to the health, safety, and wellbeing of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. Its Tobacco Consortium, established in 2000, is responsible for setting a national agenda for child and adolescent tobacco prevention and cessation for the AAP’s Julius B. Richmond Center of Excellence.  The center supports research and policy development aimed at protecting children from tobacco and secondhand smoke, and offers tools and resources to help clinicians and communities nationwide achieve this goal.

The Tobacco Consortium’s agenda is incorporated into the scientific, education and policy mission and goals of the Richmond Center, and includes children’s exposure to secondhand smoke, adolescent tobacco control, social policy and international issues. Membership includes junior and senior researchers committed to addressing tobacco as child- and adolescent-health issues.  Members are nominated for inclusion in the consortium and voted on by the AAP Board of Directors.

“I am honored to have the opportunity to serve alongside some of the national leaders in adolescent tobacco control and to help them shape this important national agenda for preventing and stopping tobacco use among teens,” Salloum said. “I am looking forward to sharing my expertise in economics and waterpipe tobacco research with the group.”