Connections Professional Society that Deborah Ossip Helped Grow Recognizes Her for Outstanding Research on Nicotine & Tobacco In November of 2017, the Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco (SRNT), named Deborah J. Ossip, PhD, one of its 2017 Fellows. The SRNT Fellows Program, which was started in 2016, recognizes society members who have made outstanding contributions to nicotine and tobacco research and have been consistently and actively engaged in the SRNT. Ossip, who is a co-director of the Center for Leading Innovation and Collaboration at the University of Rochester Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and professor of Public Health at the University of Rochester Medical Center, previously served as president of the SRNT. She has been helping people quit using tobacco for several decades through behavioral research and community outreach. She started studying tobacco use and cessation in 1980, conducting one of the original two trials that led to the national Quitline infrastructure, which includes the NYS Smokers’ Quitline (1-866-NY-Quits). Her current work focuses on translating basic science findings to practical use in population health. She has been examining secondhand smoke exposure of pregnant women across three Latin American and Caribbean countries, and working on a clinical trial of safe sleep, infant feeding, tobacco cessation and secondhand smoke reduction in low-income pregnant women. During Ossip’s tenure as SRNT president, the society grew to over 1,200 members from 40 countries, with over 80 percent involved in at least one of its eight professional development networks that range in topic from basic science to global health. She brings her experience in cross-network collaboration and engagement to her role as co-director of the Center for Leading Innovation and Collaboration, the coordinating center for the national Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program.
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UR CTSI Annual Report 2017–18