Tackling Tobacco From Another Angle

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The University has received a $20 million federal grant to create a center that will take a novel tack in the longstanding campaign against tobacco-related illness, which remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States. The University of Pennsylvania Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS), which will be jointly supported by the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health through 2018, is charged with developing a multi-disciplinary approach to counter tobacco-related advertisements and misinformation spread through both traditional and emerging media, such as Twitter.

Penn TCORS will also establish the Tobacco Fact Check Core, modeled after the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s award-winning FactCheck.org, with the aim of helping consumers distinguish fact from fiction in political messages concerning tobacco products.

The center will be co-led by Robert Hornik, the Wilbur Schramm Professor of Communication and Health Policy in the Annenberg School, and Caryn Lerman, the Mary W. Calkins Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry and deputy director of the Abramson Cancer Center [“Cutting Through the Smoke,” Jan|Feb 2003].

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