Primary Appointment

Dr. Vidrine’s research focuses on eliminating health disparities through investigating potential “windows of opportunity” for promoting health behavior change, developing and evaluating the impact of tailored health risk communications, evaluating potential mechanisms underlying changes in risk perceptions over time in the natural environment and disseminating evidence-based tobacco cessation interventions to underserved populations. Although the primary emphasis of her work to date has been on tobacco, she is very interested in other cancer risk behaviors such as cancer screening. 

 Dr. Vidrine recently completed a Mentored Research Scientist Development Award funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Health communications and risk processing among smokers (Project PRISM). The study examined real-time, momentary changes in risk perceptions in the natural environment among smokers attempting cessation. She is currently the PI on an R01 funded by the National Cancer Institute: Literacy and Smoking Risk Communications (Project INFORM). The primary aim of this study is to examine how health literacy influences responses to smoking risk messages manipulated in terms of message framing and emotionality. In addition to traditional questionnaires, outcomes are assessed using “implicit” cognitive psychological measures. Thus, the study examines the immediate effects of different types of smoking risk messages on cognition in a laboratory setting. Most recently, she was awarded an R18 grant from the CDC designed to increase dissemination of an existing evidence-based smoking cessation program (i.e., the State of Texas Quitline). Referrals to quitlines in clinical settings are low, and the vast majority of smokers referred to quitlines fail to contact them on their own. The study is a group-randomized trial where clinics are randomized to either an “Ask-Advise-Connect” or an “Ask-Advise-Refer” dissemination approach. Smoking status is assessed and recorded in the electronic medical record (EMR) at every patient visit, and smokers who are ready to quit are immediately connected to the Quitline through an automated link contained in the EMR (Connect condition) or referred to the Quitline (Refer condition). Primary outcomes include the proportion of smokers who are ready to quit who receive Quitline services and who successfully quit.

 She is also a co-investigator on a project within a P60 award: Neighborhood- and Individual-Level Determinants of Smoking Cessation among Hispanics (PI: Wetter). The major goals of this longitudinal cohort study are to examine the neighborhood, individual, and contextual mechanisms underlying smoking cessation among Spanish-speaking Latino smokers. In addition, she is a co-investigator on an R01 grant, A Mindfulness-Based Treatment Study for Nicotine Dependence (Project MIND) to evaluate a smoking cessation treatment offered in a group setting (PI: Wetter). She was supported by a National Cancer Institute funded postdoctoral fellowship in cancer prevention.

 Dr. Vidrine has a joint appointment in the Department of Behavioral Science at M. D. Anderson.

·         Associations between health risk perceptions and health behaviors

·         Health communications targeted to underserved populations

·         Dissemination of evidence-based interventions to underserved populations

·         Development and evaluation of smoking cessation interventions targeted to special populations

Institutional Committee Activities

Last updated: 9/10/2009