Raymond S Niaura

Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Professional overview

Dr. Raymond Niaura is a psychologist and an expert on tobacco dependence and treatment, as well as substance use and addiction to alcohol. Dr. Niaura researches the biobehavioral substrates of tobacco dependence, including factors that influence adolescent and early adult tobacco use trajectories. He also evaluates behavioral and pharmacological treatments for tobacco cessation, with a particular interest in cessation in disadvantaged population to address public health disparities in tobacco-related burdens of illness and disability.

For eight year, Dr. Niaura was the Director of Science and Training at the Schroeder Institute (SI) for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the Truth Initiative, where he also supervised the pre- and post-doctoral training programs. Dr. Niaura has previously taught and conducted research at Brown University, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Georgetown Medical Center, and the School of Public Health at University of Maryland. He was also a former President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and is  a Deputy Editor of the Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

With grants from the National Institutes of Health, numerous foundations, and private industry, Dr. Niaura has published over 400 peer-reviewed articles, commentaries, and book chapters, including the book The Tobacco Dependence Treatment Handbook: A Guide to Best Practices.

Education

BA, Psychology (First Class Honors), McGill University, Montreal, Canada

MS, Psychology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

PhD, Psychology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Honors and awards

Research Laureate, American Academy of Health Behavior (2009)

University Scholar Award, McGill University (1979)

Areas of research and study

Alcohol, Tobacco and Driving Policies

Evaluations

Health Disparities

Substance Abuse

Tobacco Control

Publications

Publications

Patterns of nicotine and tobacco product use in youth and young adults in the United States, 2011-2015

Pooled analysis of three randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled trials with rimonabant for smoking cessation

Potential deaths averted in USA by replacing cigarettes with e-cigarettes

Prevalence and correlates of smoking among people living with HIV in South Africa

Qualitative exploration of a smoking cessation trial for people living with HIV in South Africa

Transitions in tobacco product use by u.S. adults between 2013–2014 and 2014–2015: Findings from the path study wave 1 and wave 2

A framework for evaluating the public health impact of e-cigarettes and other vaporized nicotine products

Analysis of E-cigarette use in the 2014 Eurobarometer survey: calling out deficiencies in epidemiology methods

Polosa, R., Caponnetto, P., Niaura, R., & Abrams, D. (n.d.).

Publication year

2017

Journal title

Internal and Emergency Medicine

Volume

12

Issue

6

Page(s)

733-735

10.1007/s11739-017-1667-z

Association of TAS2R38 haplotypes and menthol cigarette preference in an African American cohort

Comparison of ecological momentary assessment versus direct measurement of E-cigarette use with a bluetooth-enabled E-cigarette:a pilot study

Computational models used to assess US tobacco control policies

Crowdsourced data collection for public health: A comparison with nationally representative, population tobacco use data

Design and methods of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study

Determining non-cigarette tobacco, alcohol, and substance use typologies across menthol and non-menthol smokers using latent class analysis

Developing consistent and transparent models of E-cigarette use: Reply to Glantz and Soneji et al.

Levy, D. T., Borland, R., Fong, G. T., Villanti, A. C., Niaura, R., Meza, R., Holford, T. R., Michael Cummings, K., & Abrams, D. B. (n.d.). In Nicotine and Tobacco Research (1–).

Publication year

2017

Volume

19

Issue

2

Page(s)

268-270

10.1093/ntr/ntw236

Electronic cigarette use among US adults in the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study, 2013–2014

Facility-level, state, and financial factors associated with changes in the provision of smoking cessation services in US substance abuse treatment facilities: Results from the National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services 2006 to 2012

Feasibility of ecological momentary assessment of daily sexting and substance use among young adult african American gay and bisexual men: A pilot study

Flavored Tobacco Product Use in Youth and Adults: Findings From the First Wave of the PATH Study (2013–2014)

Frequency of youth e-cigarette and tobacco use patterns in the United States: Measurement precision is critical to inform public health

Frequency of youth e-cigarette, tobacco, and poly-use in the United States, 2015: Update to Villanti et al., "frequency of youth e-cigarette and tobacco use patterns in the United States: Measurement precision is critical to inform public health"

Collins, L. K., Villanti, A. C., Pearson, J. L., Glasser, A. M., Johnson, A. L., Niaura, R. S., & Abrams, D. B. (n.d.). In Nicotine and Tobacco Research (1–).

Publication year

2017

Volume

19

Issue

10

Page(s)

1253-1254

10.1093/ntr/ntx073

Improving adherence to smoking cessation treatment: Intervention effects in a web-based randomized trial

Indicators of dependence for different types of tobacco product users: Descriptive findings from Wave 1 (2013–2014) of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) study

Learning from our failures in smoking cessation research

Menthol cigarettes and the public health standard: A systematic review