Community Engagement

Findings from a December 2018 National Institute on Drug Abuse “Monitoring the Future” survey reported a dramatic increase in the number of teens using vaping devices from 2017 to 2018, and the number of high school seniors using nearly doubled in that timeframe. To educate the local community about this concerning trend, the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont and UVM Medical Center hosted a Community Medical School lecture by Associate Professor of Psychiatry Andrea Villanti, M.P.H., Ph.D., titled “Vaping, Juuling, and E-Cigarettes: Public Health Implications” on Tuesday, April 2, 2019 in Carpenter Auditorium in the Given Building at the College of Medicine. (Link to the presentation video here.)

Villanti, who joined the UVM faculty in 2016, is a public health researcher in UVM’s Vermont Center on Behavior and Health who focuses on youth and young adult tobacco use. Prior to coming to UVM, she completed a research fellowship and served as a research investigator and director for regulatory science and policy at the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at Truth Initiative (formerly American Legacy Foundation) in Washington, D.C., and also served as an assistant scientist in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In addition to serving as an investigator in the Vermont Center on Behavior and Health, she is co-leader of the Cancer Control and Population Health Sciences Program in the UVM Cancer Center. The recipient of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco’s 2018 Jarvik-Russell Early Career Award, she recently testified before the Vermont Senate Health & Welfare Committee about e-cigarettes.

Listen to a Marketplace report regarding tobacco sales to underage individuals featuring comments from Villanti here. Listen to a Vermont Public Radio Vermont Edition segment featuring Villanti regarding her new study to track young Vermonters' drugs of choice.