Mark Nichter, Ph.D., M.P.H. (Principal Investigator) is Regents Professor in the University of Arizona’s School of Anthropology and holds joint appointments in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the College of Public Health. He has over thirty years of experience implementing a wide range of health-related research projects in Asia and is well known to the global health and to the tobacco control community. He served as Senior Health Social Science Field Advisor to the International Network of Clinical Epidemiology (INCLEN) for nearly twenty years. In this capacity, Dr. Nichter has coordinated and given technical assistance to scores of health-related projects in South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa. In the area of tobacco control, Dr. Nichter has carried out 21 years of continuous research on tobacco use in the US and Asia. He has served on the Institute of Medicine panel on nicotine addiction among youth and as a member of the Robert Wood Johnson-funded Tobacco Etiology Research Network (TERN) which investigated patterns of tobacco use leading to dependence. Dr Nichter was a Co-Investigator in Project Reach, a community-based tobacco cessation project based in the United States.
Mimi Nichter, Ph.D. (Co-Principal Investigator) is Professor in the University of Arizona School of Anthropology holding joint appointments in the College of Public Health and the Norton School of Family Studies and Human Development. For the past 20 years she has been actively involved in tobacco-related research both in the U.S. and in low and middle income years. For 5 years, she worked with the Tobacco Education Prevention and Cessation Program in Arizona, developing and implementing school-based prevention and cessation programs. She has also served as an evaluator on tobacco and other health-related projects both in the US and in South Asia. Dr. Mimi Nichter has been Co-Investigator on a number of NIH and Robert Wood Johnson-funded longitudinal research studies and has published on methodological and gender related issues in tobacco research. She was a Faculty Scholar with the Tobacco Etiology Research Network funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Nichter has extensive experience working in South and Southeast Asia on issues concerning gender and health and has served as a consultant for WHO, UNICEF, the Ford Foundation, and other agencies. Dr Nichter was a Co-Investigator in Project Reach, a community-based tobacco cessation project based in the United States.
Nawi Ng, MD, MPH, PhD is a Professor of Global Health at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is also a Guest Professor at Umeå University, Sweden. Prior to moving to Sweden, Nawi worked with Project QTI, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. His research focuses on epidemiology of non-communicable diseases and ageing, disability and quality of life among older people in Sweden and in low- and middle-income countries in collaboration with the WHO and the INDEPTH Network. He is leading the Global and Public Health research group at the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Gothenburg. During 2019-2022, he leads five research projects funded by different Swedish Research Councils on: (i) poverty and ageing in Myanmar; (ii) implementation research on the integration of TB, DM and tobacco control programme in India and Indonesia; (iii) digital coaching for sustainable behavior change and health promotion in Sweden; (iv) developing risk prediction score for cardiovascular diseases using big data; and (v) social capital for planning and design of a sustainable neighbourhood in Sweden. Dr. Ng has published extensively in peer-review international journals. He served as the Managing Editor of the journal Global Health Action during 2007-2014, and as the Chief Editor during 2015-2018.
We want to gratefully acknowledge the work of Dr. Myra Muramoto,M.D., MPH, Professor and Head, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Arizona, who was instrumental in the development of the tobacco education curricula for medical students and cessation training in India and Indonesia. As a co PI of Project QTI, Dr. Muramoto oversaw the creation of the educational modules which are now being utilized in medical colleges in India and Indonesia.
Dr. Muramoto is a translational researcher experienced with a wide range of research settings and special populations. She has conducted studies in healthcare, community, public health, and international health settings. Dr. Muramoto is also a practicing family physician for the University of Arizona Health Network where she is the founding Director of the Tobacco-Free Living Program and founding co-Director the Clinical Weight Loss Program for severe obesity.
