Jennifer Cantrell

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Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Jennifer Cantrell, DrPH, MPA, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the NYU School of Global Public Health. Her research investigates emerging trends in tobacco and nicotine use and industry marketing, and explores clinical, countermarketing and policy interventions to diminish tobacco's appeal and promote health equity.

Dr. Cantrell currently leads a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded grant (R01CA268932) that uses Multiphase Optimization STrategy (MOST) to optimize cessation treatment for smokers living with HIV in clinical care. This study uses MOST, implementation science and decision analysis to test four interventions targeting multilevel barriers to quitting for people living with HIV, with the aim of developing a cost-effective, scalable and sustainable treatment package delivered in HIV clinical care. In other funded research, Dr. Cantrell uses diverse data sources and methods to explore evolving tobacco and nicotine use patterns and the commercial determinants that drive use. Her research also examines innovative digital counter-marketing strategies with a focus on achieving optimal exposure levels and effective counter-messaging.

Dr. Cantrell is a Co-Investigator with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded R25 training grant on Optimization of Behavioral and Biobehavioral Interventions (PI: Linda Collins). She is Chair of Early Career Faculty Outreach for the NYU Center for the Advancement and Dissemination of Intervention Optimization (CADIO), which trains investigators in intervention optimization methodologies worldwide. She has also served on the Advisory Committees for the Treatment Network and the Health Equity Network for the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. Dr. Cantrell has published over 70 scientific articles and co-authored a chapter on “Communication, Marketing and Tobacco-related Disparities” in the NCI Monograph 22: A Socioecological Approach to Tobacco-related Disparities. Her research has been published in the American Journal of Public Health, Addiction, Nicotine & Tobacco Research and other leading journals, and featured in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and The Boston Globe. She also received the highly competitive National Institutes of Health Loan Repayment Program award from the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities for her work on tobacco disparities and health equity.

Prior to joining NYU GPH, Dr. Cantrell was a Managing Director and Scientist at Truth Initiative, a national non-profit research and education organization focused on tobacco use prevention and cessation, where she evaluated and conducted research on national anti-smoking mass media efforts, including the award-winning truth® campaign and the Centers for Disease Control’s Tips for Former Smokers campaign. As part of this work, she led the development of the winning proposal for the 2017 Berreth Award for Excellence in Public Health Communication. She earned her DrPH from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and her MPA from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. She completed postdoctoral training in the NIDA program for Behavioral Science Training in Drug Abuse Research at National Development Research Institutes in New York, NY.

Areas of research and study

Alcohol, Tobacco and Driving Policies

Behavioral Science

Health Disparities

Population Health

Public Health Policy

Social Behaviors

Social epidemiology

Publications

Patterns of combustible tobacco use in U.S. young adults and potential response to graphic cigarette health warning labels

The impact of the tobacco retail outlet environment on adult cessation and differences by neighborhood poverty

Tobacco retail outlet advertising practices and proximity to schools, parks and public housing affect Synar underage sales violations in Washington, DC

A Multilevel Analysis of Gender, Latino Immigrant Enclaves, and Tobacco Use Behavior

Cameras for public health surveillance: A methods protocol for crowdsourced annotation of point-of-sale photographs

Ilakkuvan, V., Tacelosky, M., Ivey, K. C., Pearson, J. L., Cantrell, J., Vallone, D. M., Abrams, D. B., & Kirchner, T. R. (n.d.).

Publication year

2014

Journal title

JMIR Research Protocols

Volume

Issue

10.2196/resprot.3277

Abstract

Abstract

Background: Photographs are an effective way to collect detailed and objective information about the environment, particularly for public health surveillance. However, accurately and reliably annotating (ie, extracting information from) photographs remains difficult, a critical bottleneck inhibiting the use of photographs for systematic surveillance. The advent of distributed human computation (ie, crowdsourcing) platforms represents a veritable breakthrough, making it possible for the first time to accurately, quickly, and repeatedly annotate photos at relatively low cost. Objective: This paper describes a methods protocol, using photographs from point-of-sale surveillance studies in the field of tobacco control to demonstrate the development and testing of custom-built tools that can greatly enhance the quality of crowdsourced annotation. Methods: Enhancing the quality of crowdsourced photo annotation requires a number of approaches and tools. The crowdsourced photo annotation process is greatly simplified by decomposing the overall process into smaller tasks, which improves accuracy and speed and enables adaptive processing, in which irrelevant data is filtered out and more difficult targets receive increased scrutiny. Additionally, zoom tools enable users to see details within photographs and crop tools highlight where within an image a specific object of interest is found, generating a set of photographs that answer specific questions. Beyond such tools, optimizing the number of raters (ie, crowd size) for accuracy and reliability is an important facet of crowdsourced photo annotation. This can be determined in a systematic manner based on the difficulty of the task and the desired level of accuracy, using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses. Usability tests of the zoom and crop tool suggest that these tools significantly improve annotation accuracy. The tests asked raters to extract data from photographs, not for the purposes of assessing the quality of that data, but rather to assess the usefulness of the tool. The proportion of individuals accurately identifying the presence of a specific advertisement was higher when provided with pictures of the product's logo and an example of the ad, and even higher when also provided the zoom tool (χ2 2=155.7, P<.001). Similarly, when provided cropped images, a significantly greater proportion of respondents accurately identified the presence of cigarette product ads (χ2 1=75.14, P<.001), as well as reported being able to read prices (χ2 2=227.6, P<.001). Comparing the results of crowdsourced photo-only assessments to traditional field survey data, an excellent level of correspondence was found, with area under the ROC curves produced by sensitivity analyses averaging over 0.95, requiring on average 10 to 15 crowdsourced raters to achieve values of over 0.90. Results: Further testing and improvement of these tools and processes is currently underway. This includes conducting systematic evaluations that crowdsource photograph annotation and methodically assess the quality of raters' work. Conclusions: Overall, the combination of crowdsourcing technologies with tiered data flow and tools that enhance annotation quality represents a breakthrough solution to the problem of photograph annotation, vastly expanding opportunities for the use of photographs rich in public health and other data on a scale previously unimaginable.

Cantrell et al. Respond

Cantrell, J., Kreslake, J., Ganz, O., Pearson, J. L., Vallone, D. M., Anesetti-Rothermel, A., Xiao, H., & Kirchner, T. R. (n.d.). In American journal of public health (1–).

Publication year

2014

Volume

104

Issue

Page(s)

e1-e2

10.2105/AJPH.2013.301826

Perceptions and perceived impact of graphic cigarette health warning labels on smoking behavior among U.S. young adults

Geospatial exposure to point-of-sale tobacco: Real-time craving and smoking-cessation outcomes

Kirchner, T. R., Cantrell, J., Anesetti-Rothermel, A., Ganz, O., Vallone, D. M., & Abrams, D. B. (n.d.).

Publication year

2013

Journal title

American journal of preventive medicine

Volume

Issue

Page(s)

379-385

10.1016/j.amepre.2013.05.016

Abstract

Abstract

Background: Little is known about the factors that drive the association between point-of-sale marketing and behavior, because methods that directly link individual-level use outcomes to real-world point-of-sale exposure are only now beginning to be developed. Purpose: Daily outcomes during smoking cessation were examined as a function of both real-time geospatial exposure to point-of-sale tobacco (POST) and subjective craving to smoke. Methods: Continuous individual geospatial location data collected over the first month of a smoking-cessation attempt in 2010-2012 (N=475) were overlaid on a POST outlet geodatabase (N=1060). Participants' mobility data were used to quantify the number of times they came into contact with a POST outlet. Participants recorded real-time craving levels and smoking status via ecological momentary assessment (EMA) on cellular telephones. Results: The final data set spanned a total of 12,871 days of EMA and geospatial tracking. Lapsing was significantly more likely on days with any POST contact (OR=1.19, 95% CI=1.18, 1.20), and increasingly likely as the number of daily POST contacts increased (OR=1.07, 95% CI=1.06, 1.08). Overall, daily POST exposure was significantly associated with lapsing when craving was low (OR=1.22, 95% CI=1.20, 1.23); high levels of craving were more directly associated with lapse outcomes. Conclusions: These data shed light on the way mobility patterns drive a dynamic interaction between individuals and the POST environment, demonstrating that quantification of individuals' exposure to POST marketing can be used to identify previously unrecognized patterns of association among individual mobility, the built environment, and behavioral outcomes.

Impact of Tobacco-Related Health Warning Labels across Socioeconomic, Race and Ethnic Groups: Results from a Randomized Web-Based Experiment

Marketing little cigars and cigarillos: Advertising, price, and associations with neighborhood demographics

Metropolitan Social Environments and Pre-HAART/HAART Era Changes in Mortality Rates (per 10,000 Adult Residents) among Injection Drug Users Living with AIDS