Our Team

What is AppalTRuST?

We are a research team, funded by the US Federal and Drug Administration Center for Tobacco Products (FDA CTP) through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate the impact of FDA tobacco regulatory policies in rural communities. We are especially interested in how different types of rurality may change the effectiveness and impact of FDA regulatory policies in shifting individuals to lower harm products or quitting tobacco altogether. Our focus will be on Appalachian Kentucky because it is a vulnerable rural region that is overly impacted by socioeconomic disadvantage and tobacco use.

A Community of Collaborators

AppalTRuST is made up of a highly collaborative, multidisciplinary group of investigators representing five colleges at the University of Kentucky (UK) (medicine, nursing, public health, education and arts and sciences), two University Centers (Markey Cancer Center and BREATHE), and the Pacific Institute of Research and Evaluation (PIRE) Louisville Kentucky (KY) Center. AppalTRuST investigators have complementary expertise in tobacco regulatory science, tobacco control policy, tobacco marketing, epidemiology, health economics, community engaged research (CEnR), biostatistics, and data science.

Our AppalTRuST team consists of a Director/PI, two associate directors, seven core or project leads, 15 additional faculty co-investigators, 20+ professional staff, and more than a dozen (planned) trainees, including faculty scholars, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students.

AppalTRuST Affiliates are faculty and staff from across UK’s campus that support our goal of investigating the impact of US Federal and Drug Administration Center for Tobacco Products (FDA CTP) regulatory policies in rural communities, a vulnerable and understudied population, through collaboration, education, and pioneering regulatory scientific research. If you would like to be an AppalTRuST Affiliate, you can sign up here.