As Chief Health Officer, Dr. Graham leads the tobacco cessation efforts of Truth Initiative with a focus on improving the health of the nation. With a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and a distinguished career in behavioral science, Dr. Graham has dedicated her professional life to the intersection of technology and public health, pioneering innovative approaches to tobacco cessation.
Under her leadership, Truth Initiative has launched groundbreaking digital cessation programs and initiatives that have set new standards in the fight against tobacco and nicotine addiction. Dr. Graham’s work embodies a commitment to evidence-based strategies, leveraging the latest in digital health technologies to empower individuals to lead healthier lives free from the grips of tobacco addiction. Her expertise and passion for public health have made her a respected leader and advocate in the global effort to end the tobacco epidemic.
For 25 years, Dr. Graham’s NIH-funded research has focused on technology-based tobacco cessation interventions. She is internationally recognized as a thought leader in web and mobile quit-smoking interventions and online social networks and has been awarded over $15 million in research funding. She has published over 120 peer reviewed manuscripts and serves on National Institutes of Health study sections and numerous journal editorial boards. She is a frequent presenter at international, national, and local scientific and public health meetings. She has also been interviewed by numerous media outlets including NBC News, WIRED, HR Magazine, Employee Benefits Advisor, and Prevention.com, and has been quoted in top-tier outlets including CNN, US News & World Report, and the Los Angeles Times.
Dr. Graham obtained her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Richmond. She earned her Master of Science and doctorate in Clinical Health Psychology from the University of Health Sciences/Chicago Medical School and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Behavioral Medicine at Brown Medical School where she remained on faculty for seven years. Dr. Graham is Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, and Adjunct Professor of Oncology at Georgetown University Medical Center. Her professional achievements have earned her Fellow status in the Society of Behavioral Medicine and the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.
Youth tobacco control has made significant strides over the past two decades in addressing the risks of tobacco use for youth and young adults. Combustible cigarette use among teens has reached an all-time low, with only 1.4% currently smoking—down from 34.5% of high school students in 2000. Similarly, youth e-cigarette […]
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When looking to cut costs, health plans may put smoking and vaping cessation programs on the chopping block. But if your health plan views its smoking and vaping cessation programs as expendable, cutting them is not the solution. It’s time to find a better vendor. Here are 4 signs health […]
Read More… from 4 Signs Health Plans Need Better Smoking and Vaping Cessation Programs
Many know the health risks associated with smoking and female fertility, but what about smoking and male fertility? Turns out, smoking and male fertility issues are closely linked, too. Smoking is associated with a range of male fertility issues, such as low sperm count, poor sperm quality, and reduced sperm […]
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When it comes to healthcare costs, you likely know that smoking is behind expensive heart and lung disease, as well as numerous cancers. But individuals who smoke also have major problems when it comes to bones, joints, tissues, ligaments, and tendons. The result? More sick time for them and more […]
Read More… from 4 Ways Tobacco Use Makes Musculoskeletal Disorders More Costly
Smoking vs. vaping. Dual use. Continuum of risk. If these terms have you confused about what to recommend to your employees or health plan members who smoke, read on. What happens when you quit smoking cigarettes Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death. Quitting smoking is the most important […]
Read More… from What Happens When You Quit Smoking and Start Vaping?
Smoking is expensive and contributes to a wide range of costly diseases, including some that may not be on your radar. You likely know the most expensive medical conditions associated with smoking—chronic illnesses like cancer and heart disease. These conditions cost over $600 billion each year and make up a […]
Read More… from 5 Sneaky Ways Smoking Is Expensive for Healthcare
The costs of smoking and kidney disease are a substantial burden across healthcare systems and payers. But helping individuals quit smoking can significantly reduce the risk of kidney disease. Among those with kidney disease, quitting smoking can also improve outcomes. Here are the facts you need to know. Prevalence of […]
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Those working in white-collar professional services typically have lower rates of smoking and vaping than other industries. But a creeping trend of nicotine pouch use among workers in demanding industries, such as finance and technology, could be changing things. What are Zyn and other nicotine pouches? Nicotine pouches are tiny […]
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Doctors and nurses who smoke can affect more than your organization’s healthcare costs; they can influence the quality of care for patients, too. Healthcare professionals are some of the most influential employees for a clinic, hospital, or health care system. They impact everything from the work environment to patient satisfaction […]
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Every day, millions of U.S. adults struggle with tobacco addiction. At Truth Initiative, we’re on a mission to change this. Our vision is to create a world where young people reject tobacco and anyone can quit. Inspired by Mayo Clinic’s effective on-site treatment model for tobacco addiction, we partnered with […]
Read More… from Empowering Quitters: A Year in Review of EX Program’s Impact on Tobacco Addiction
For the foreseeable future, expanding mental health benefits is a top priority for many employers and health plans alike. From stress to anxiety and depression, the list of mental health issues that employers and health plans strive to support is broad. Yet, there is one constant thread that pulls through, […]
Read More… from Care About Employee Mental Health? This Matters Too
HIV and smoking are a costly and deadly combination that absorbs significant Medicaid dollars. In 2022, the federal government spent an estimated $13 billion on Medicaid services for people with HIV. Additionally, state Medicaid spending totaled an estimated $5.4 billion in the same year. Antiretroviral therapies have provided the ability […]
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What does the environment have to do with the vendors you select for your health and wellness benefits? Plenty. In recent years, more and more companies are pledging to work only with vendors that adhere to social and environmental standards. At Truth Initiative, protecting the environment has long been a […]
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How do you help someone quit smoking? Answer: Recommend using research-backed and proven-effective resources for support. Remind the tobacco user that it can take multiple attempts to quit. And reinforce that while they may attempt to quit without help, support is critical and can improve the chances of long-term success. […]
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In 2021, the digital health market seemed unstoppable, with growth-driven startups attracting major funding. This uptick in activity began in response to COVID-19 when demand for tech-heavy services like virtual care prompted significant innovation. But no industry can stay white-hot forever, and with digital health, the cooling period has been […]
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Employers have had to make tough choices about benefits budgets in the past few years to recruit top talent, affect employee health, and contain spending. Among employers with 5,000 or more employees, quit smoking programs have remained a priority. In fact, the percentage of those that offer support to quit […]
Read More… from Why Quit Smoking Programs Need to Stay in Your Benefits Mix
Like many HR experts, you’re likely wondering how to reduce mental health stigma in the workplace. You may be thinking about ways to promote awareness of mental health treatment. You’ve likely thought about how to make those treatments as accessible as possible to encourage engagement. Maybe you’re trying to encourage […]
Read More… from How to Reduce Mental Health Stigma, Smoking Stigma in the Workplace
For many years, tobacco use has been talked about as a “lifestyle choice” and a “bad habit.” The consequences of smoking are now widely known more than 50 years after the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health in 1964. So, if someone is smoking in 2022, it’s their […]
Read More… from Why Your Plans for Diversity and Social Justice Must Address Tobacco
When it comes to employee tobacco use, many employers seem to take a contradictory approach: Expect change but stay hands-off. You’ll likely hear phrases like, “People who smoke don’t really want to quit,” or “Smoking is just part of some people’s lifestyle and I don’t want to nag them, they […]
Read More… from Why Employees Need You to Butt In about Tobacco Use
Quitting smoking is one of the most challenging addictions to break. Early in my career, I worked with many longtime smokers who had successfully quit drugs like heroin and cocaine. Time after time, they would note the ways that quitting cigarettes was different—and much harder. Decades of research have led […]
Read More… from Novel Approaches: What Science Says Helps People Quit Tobacco
In 1992, I was sitting in the cardiac surgery waiting room while my father underwent an aortic valve transplant, knowing I would likely need the same procedure myself someday for the same condition. We sat for hours, waiting for news that was literally life or death. It was the first […]
Read More… from Finding Better Ways to Help People Stop Smoking
24.9% vs. 10.7%. That’s the difference in smoking rates between adults on Medicaid and those with private health insurance. Given the deadly effects of smoking from head to toe, this staggering disparity cannot be ignored. Coverage of cessation treatments to help Medicaid enrollees quit smoking has improved in recent years. […]
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Does anyone smoke anymore? Doesn’t everyone know how deadly it is? People who are still smoking must not want to quit, right? Do companies even need to offer quit-smoking resources? Depending on where you live or work, these questions may make total sense. As smoke-free laws and workplace smoking policies […]
Read More… from Think Quit-smoking Resources Aren’t Needed? Here’s a Reality Check
Social determinants of health and tobacco use are unfortunate bedfellows, but you might not know this. With laws limiting where people can smoke, it might seem like tobacco use is fast becoming a relic of the past, along with smoky restaurants and office ashtrays. But that’s far from the case. […]
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In 2018, San Francisco became the first city to prohibit the sale of all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes. While San Francisco’s restriction is the strongest in the nation, other cities across the U.S. have taken similar action. The legislation is designed to restrict flavored tobacco products that entice […]
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Persons with serious mental illness (i.e., schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or recurrent major depression) are three times more likely to smoke tobacco than are persons in the general U.S. population. Smoking […]
Introduction We determined whether a tobacco cessation intervention targeting brief perioperative abstinence (“quit for a bit”) increased engagement of surgical patients with treatment compared with an intervention targeting long-term postoperative […]
Trial design A parallel, two-group individually-randomized controlled trial with 1:1 allocation compared the tailored text message program and companion web-based intervention for SDYA who smoke cigarettes with a usual-care control […]
Abstract Objective: This qualitative study explored whether evidence-based tobacco cessation treatment components can be deployed via web-based live chat coaching. Methods: N = 100 randomly selected chats were coded. Researchers […]
Abstract Importance e-Cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among young adults (YAs). Despite the harms of nicotine exposure among YAs, there are few, if any, empirically tested vaping cessation […]
Objectives Clean indoor air policies have been an important tool protecting the health of working adults. The purpose of this study was to examine awareness of and support for e-cigarette-free […]
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Objective: Describe workplace vaping, prevalence of observed use, attitudes and perceptions among U.S. adults. Methods: Employees of companies with >150 employees, drawn from an opt-in national online panel (N=1607), ages […]
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Objective Assess workplace vaping as a trigger for tobacco use; examine interest in and prevalence of vaping cessation programs; determine needs of parents whose children vape. Methods Employees of companies […]
Background Smoking remains a leading cause of preventable death and illness. Internet interventions for smoking cessation have the potential to significantly impact public health, given their broad reach and proven […]
Aims The cooling and minty flavor of menthol in cigarettes has been hypothesized to mask the harshness of inhaled cigarette smoke, contributing to menthol’s appeal and subjective reinforcement and linking […]
Background Heavy drinking (HD) is far more common among smokers compared with nonsmokers and interferes with successful smoking cessation. Alcohol-focused smoking cessation interventions delivered by counselors have shown promise, but […]
Background Millions of young adults currently vape electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), yet little research on vaping cessation interventions exists. Text messaging is a promising, scalable intervention strategy for delivering vaping cessation […]
This commentary addresses the role of digital tobacco cessation programs integrated into lung cancer screening. Given the enormous toll from smoking caused disease, it is important to continue to implement […]
Abstract Although surgical patients who smoke could benefit from perioperative abstinence, few currently receive support. This pilot study determined the feasibility and acceptability of a perioperative text messaging smoking cessation […]
Background The 2018 National Youth Tobacco Survey showed e-cigarette use among middle and high schoolers increased by 48% and 78%, respectively, in just one year. More than 3.6 million youth […]
Background Few Internet smoking cessation programs specifically address the impact of alcohol use during a quit attempt, despite its common role in relapse. This study used topic modeling to describe […]
Abstract Mental health problems like anxiety, depression, and substance use problems commonly co-occur with cigarette smoking and are linked to poor cessation outcomes. Although millions of smokers seek online quitting […]
Background This study quantified the potential reach of Internet smoking cessation interventions to support calculations of potential population impact (reach × effectiveness). Using a nationally representative survey, we calculated the […]
Background Little is known about the influence of online peer interactions on health behavior change. This study examined the relationship between exposure to peer sentiment about nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) […]
Introduction Smoking causes about 20% of all deaths in the United States. The majority of smokers want to quit, and over 12 million turned to the internet for information about […]
Background Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States. Smoking prevalence is higher in rural areas than in metropolitan areas, due partly to […]
Background Partial adherence in Internet smoking cessation interventions presents treatment and evaluation challenges. Increasing adherence may improve outcomes. Purpose To present smoking outcomes from an Internet randomized trial of two […]
Introduction User generated content (UGC) is a valuable but underutilized source of information about individuals who participate in online cessation interventions. This study represents a first effort to passively detect […]
Abstract National recommendations for lung cancer screening for former and current smokers aged 55-80 years with a 30-pack year smoking history create demand to implement efficient and effective systems to […]
Background Web-based smoking cessation interventions can deliver evidence-based treatments to a wide swath of the population, but effectiveness is often limited by insufficient adherence to proven treatment components. This study […]
Background and aims: Cogent arguments have been made against the need for biochemical verification in population-based studies with low-demand characteristics. Despite this fact, studies involving digital interventions (low-demand) are often […]
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Background Previous analyses of Google search queries identified circaseptan (weekly) rhythms in smoking cessation information seeking, with Google searches for “quit” and “smoking” peaking early in the week. Similar patterns […]
Read More… from Weekly Enrollment and Usage Patterns in an Internet Smoking Cessation Intervention
Objective: Alcohol use and problem drinking are associated with smoking relapse and poor smoking-cessation success. User-generated content in online social networks for smoking cessation provides an opportunity to understand the […]
Background Delivering effective tobacco dependence treatment that is feasible within lung cancer screening (LCS) programs is crucial for realizing the health benefits and cost savings of screening. Large-scale trials and […]
Introduction Use of online social networks for smoking cessation has been associated with abstinence. Little is known about the mechanisms through which the formation of social ties in an online […]
Read More… from A Prospective Examination of Online Social Network Dynamics and Smoking Cessation
Abstract In 1986, Lichtenstein et al. (Behav Ther. 17(5):607-19, 1986) presented the results of five studies focused on enhancing social support for smoking cessation in community-based clinic and worksite interventions. […]
Introduction A challenge in Electronic Nicotine Delivery System (ENDS) research is how to refer to these devices in ways that are meaningful to current or potential users. The objectives of […]
Background The aim of this systematic review was to determine the effectiveness of Internet interventions in promoting smoking cessation among adult tobacco users relative to other forms of intervention recommended […]
Background Online health communities (OHCs) provide a convenient and commonly used way for people to connect around shared health experiences, exchange information, and receive social support. Users often interact with […]
Background The potential for sampling bias in Internet smoking cessation studies is widely recognized. However, few studies have explicitly addressed the issue of sample representativeness in the context of an […]
Introduction Millions of smokers use the Internet for smoking cessation assistance each year; however, most smokers engage minimally with even the best designed websites. The ubiquity of mobile devices and […]
Background Internet interventions may have an important role to play in helping self-quitters maintain an initial period of abstinence. Little is known about the characteristics and utilization patterns of former […]
Introduction Internet interventions can reach large numbers of individuals. However, low levels of engagement and high rates of follow-up attrition are common, presenting major challenges to evaluation. This study investigated […]
Background: Evidence from observational studies regarding the association between electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use and cessation is mixed and difficult to interpret. Utilizing 2 analytic methods, this study illustrates challenges common […]
Background Seasonal variations in smoking and quitting behaviors have been documented, with many smokers seeking cessation assistance around the start of the New Year. What remains unknown is whether smokers […]
Background Reducing smoking prevalence is a public health priority that can save more lives and money than almost any other known preventive intervention. Internet interventions have the potential for enormous […]
Background Web-based smoking cessation interventions can have a public health impact because they are both effective in promoting cessation and can reach large numbers of smokers in a cost-efficient manner. […]
Read More… from Engagement Promotes Abstinence in a Web-based Cessation Intervention: Cohort Study
Background Tobacco cessation among Latinos is a public health priority in the United States, particularly given the relatively high growth of this population segment. Although a substantial percentage of American […]
