Appalachian Tobacco Regulatory Science Team (AppalTRuST)
The University of Kentucky will be home to a new research center focused on tobacco regulations in the Commonwealth named the Appalachian Tobacco Regulatory Science Team (AppalTRuST). The goal? To investigate the impact of federal regulatory policies in rural communities through collaboration, education and pioneering regulatory scientific research.
AppalTRuST is funded over five years with a $19 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) under the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Office of the Director of the NIH and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). As part of an interagency partnership, the NIH and FDA award Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS) grants that support studies across topics like toxicity, addiction, health effects and marketing.
“This award helps us put a formal structure in place to continue to serve the Commonwealth of Kentucky to help reduce the adverse health effects affiliated with people’s choices to use nicotine,” said Himelhoch. “AppalTRuST will lead the way and shine a light on the current problem with tobacco use and may help people find solutions to overcome those issues.”
AppalTRuST will focus its research in two areas of Kentucky — Boyd, Carter, and Greenup counties in northeast Kentucky, on the outskirts of an urban area (Huntington, West Virginia), and a more rural group of counties in southeast Kentucky: Breathitt, Knott, Leslie, Letcher, and Perry.
The team is using an original research approach through a lens of rural heterogeneity, which is the idea that not all rural areas are the same and can vary significantly in terms of their features and challenges. This means that the impact of FDA regulatory policy may differ across rural areas as well.
Kentuckians are at a much higher risk for heart disease, lung conditions and cancer due to high smoking rates and weak smoke-free protections. AppalTRuST will learn with and from the community to better understand their use of tobacco, retail marketing of tobacco projects, and consumer behaviors in rural communities. The health and economic burdens from tobacco use in our state is enormous, and we hope to foster sustainable change in our communities through this work.