Serving as President of SRNT for the past year has been a thoroughly enjoyable and intellectually challenging experience. The year has been filled with important steps forward in nicotine and tobacco research and in public health and public policy events, which continue even as we speak. I have outlined just a few of the most important recent and upcoming events below.

Since the last newsletter, I had the honor to provide testimony to the President's Cancer Panel (Drs. LaSalle Leffall, Jr., Margaret Kripke, and Mr. Lance Armstrong), held at The University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, MS on February 12, 2007. The topic was Promoting Healthy Lifestyles to Reduce the Risk of Cancer, specifically, tobacco and smoking. A number of our SRNT colleagues were speakers, in addition to myself: Dorothy Hatsukami, Alex Prokhorov, Michael Cummings, Pebbles Fagan, Jack Henningfield, Dick Daynard, Stan Glantz, Thomas Payne, and Cathy Melvin. Each of the presentations was outstanding. The Panel will make formal recommendations to the White House and we are very interested to learn what those will contain.

On February 28th, SRNT member Jack Henningfield presented testimony (as an individual, not as a representative of SRNT) at the hearing in the United States Senate in support of a new bill to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco. This is hotly contested legislation and I urge the membership to follow the coverage of this important issue. SRNT has not taken a position on the legislation at this time, and the Policy Committee is considering ways in which our expertise might be called upon.

The Public Health Service Smoking Cessation Clinical Practice Guideline is currently undergoing an update, and a number of SRNT members are on the Guideline Panel. The updated Guideline is scheduled to be released in 2008. The effort is led by Dr. Michael Fiore, SRNT member and 2005 winner of the Doll-Wynder Award for Research in Epidemiology and Public Health.

SRNT membership topped 1000 at the Annual Meeting (1010), with 30 countries represented. On the international front, in addition to SRNT-Europe, to be held in Madrid, Spain from October 3-6, 2007, the first SRNT Latin America and the second Iberoamerica Conference on Tobacco Control will be held in Rio de Janeiro, September 5-7, 2007 and, simultaneously, a meeting in New Zealand at which SRNT will have a pre-conference day. Our influence is rapidly developing around the world, especially under the outstanding leadership of Harry Lando, Chair of the Global Network Committee.

Since this is my final column, I want to briefly describe my ongoing research and related activities in nicotine and tobacco prevention and cessation. My clinical research remains focused on special medical populations, in particular, cancer patients and persons living with HIV/AIDS. Cancer patients continue to be at risk for adverse effects of tobacco during treatment and into survivorship — these include complications of treatment, poorer treatment outcomes, increased risk of recurrence and second primary cancers, increased co-morbidities, poorer quality of life, and reduced survival. Oncology clinical researchers have not collected data systematically on smoking history and behavior before, throughout, and following treatment trials, both in smoking-related and non-smoking-related tumors. Thus, we have not been able to carefully study these effects in a prospective manner across a wide range of cancer sites and treatment modalities and agents. The findings that are currently emerging are quite fascinating on the biological level. Nor have we conducted sufficient research in oncology populations to define the optimal forms of smoking cessation interventions, or to educate oncology specialists on its importance and their critical roles as health care providers in promoting cessation^1-3. This is an area that combines research, professional education, and systems change. At M. D. Anderson, under the leadership of SRNT members Drs. Paul Cinciripini and Jan Blalock, we have initiated a comprehensive smoking cessation service that provides evidence-based, personal and telephone counseling plus phamacotherapy to every patient who currently smokes, free of charge. Recent quitters are supported with relapse prevention counseling, and spouse/partners who smoke are also eligible for treatment at no charge.

In my other major research focus, together with a team of colleagues, including SRNT members Drs. Damon Vidrine and Paul Cinciripini, and infectious disease specialist, Dr. Roberto Arduino, we are conducting an NCI-funded R01 study of an innovative smoking cessation intervention for persons living with HIV/AIDS. This randomized controlled trial is being carried out in a large, specialized primary care facility in Houston, Texas; the patient population is multi-ethnic and low income. We are evaluating a cell phone-based counseling intervention, combined with pharmacotherapy, that is targeted and tailored to the special concerns of this population. Our studies to date have shown that the prevalence of smoking approximates 50% in this group, and that our innovative intervention is of great interest to patients, is feasible and, in a preliminary study, produced significantly higher quit rates at 3 month follow-up than a standard advice control condition^4-8. We are now conducting the full-scale trial. SRNT President, Dr. Ray Niaura, a pioneer in this field of smoking cessation intervention for HIV-positive patients, is a consultant on our study.

The Presidential Symposium at the SRNT Annual Meeting, entitled Using Social Marketing to Influence Tobacco Use Behavior: The Experience of the American Legacy Foundation, described the use of social marketing to achieve public health goals. It highlighted three Legacy campaigns in smoking prevention, smoking cessation, and encouraging families to adopt home smoking bans. It also described three campaigns funded by Legacy's grant program which were conducted in underserved "priority populations." A highlight of the symposium was the presentation describing how the Lorillard Tobacco Company unsuccessfully attempted to shut down Legacy based on the claim that the edgy truth campaign "vilified" and "personally attacked" the corporation, in violation of the Master Settlement Agreement. Being a member of the Legacy Board has been one of the culminating experiences of my career - to observe and advise a talented group of professionals as they translate the theories of public health and social marketing into very large-scale practice, with tangible success.

It has been a great honor to be your President. In my parting words, I encourage you to remain excited, intellectually stimulated, and optimistic about the discoveries as well as challenges we face in continuing to conduct research in nicotine and tobacco, and to be committed to translating those findings into clinical and public health practice that will benefit the health and well-being of our nation and the world.