Faculty and Staff

Hannah Barker, MPH, works on IGTC projects in China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. A recent graduate from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with an MPH with a concentration in Health Behavior, she also has a BA in Public Health from the University of Washington. She has done both qualitative and quantitative work on topics like mental health and excessive drinking along with web-based learning materials, including webpages that addressed equity in tobacco control.

Jenny Brown (she/her) is an Assistant Scientist in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research examines key tobacco marketing themes, the effects of tobacco marketing on consumer perceptions and compliance with tobacco control regulations with a focus on flavored tobacco products. Her research is primarily focused in low- and middle-income countries and utilizes quantitative and qualitative methods. 

Brown received her PhD from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health. She previously worked with the World Health Organization and supported efforts in countries in Africa and Southeast Asia to build capacity to regulate novel and emerging nicotine and tobacco products and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids to support grant review and evaluate grantee progress.

Rajeev Cherukupalli is an economist with interests in public finance, policy evaluation and the economics of health and health behaviors. He holds an appointment as an assistant scientist in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society.

He has edited and co-authored a series of white papers analyzing the economics of tobacco taxation in low- and middle-income countries with the highest global burden of tobacco use. He has assisted funders, non-governmental partner organizations and policymakers to strengthen the technical evidence base of tobacco tax research, policy, advocacy and administration.

Joanna Cohen is the Bloomberg Professor of Disease Prevention and the director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  

She obtained her PhD in Health Policy and Administration from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill and her MHSc in Community Health and Epidemiology from the University of Toronto. Cohen has been involved in tobacco policy research for almost 30 years. 

Trained in epidemiology and health policy, Cohen’s research interests focus on the factors that affect the adoption and implementation of public health policies and on evaluating the beneficial effects and the unintended consequences of such policies.  

Cohen is Deputy Editor of the journal Tobacco Control and is a Board member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. She is co-chair of the State of California Tobacco Control Program’s Evaluation Task Force, a member of Health Canada’s Scientific Advisory Board for Vaping Products, and was a voting member of the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee. 

Elizabeth Crespi, MPH, currently works on a number of projects at IGTC, ranging from the TPackSS and VAPER studies to the Tobacco Control Leadership Programs. She previously worked on food security issues in Baltimore as a research assistant at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and as a program coordinator for the Farm Alliance of Baltimore, a local nonprofit. Crespi holds her bachelor's degree in public health and biology and a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University.   

Lauren Czaplicki is an Associate Scientist in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society. She received her PHD from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, MPH from Tulane University, and BS from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to joining the faculty at the Institute, Czaplicki worked as a research investigator at Truth Initiative in Washington D.C., on research to inform tobacco use prevention among youth and young adults and the development of federal regulatory standards on tobacco product manufacturing and marketing.

Her research broadly focuses on corporate influence on population health outcomes and the health policy development process. She maintains a portfolio of projects which use qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate tobacco industry marketing strategies in high-, middle-, and low-income countries. Czaplicki also leads studies to evaluate the beneficial impact and unintended consequences of tobacco control policy implementation.

Jared Earley, MA, is jointly responsible for global communications strategies to support and amplify IGTC’s output. Previously, he has worked in mission-driven marketing, PR, and event production serving the retail food/beverage and film/arts sectors. Jared is the recipient of a gold ADDY award from the American Advertising Federation and seasonally he co-manages festival logistics for the Boston Globe’s GlobeDocs Film Festival. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in film studies and a certificate in children’s literature, Jared earned his MA in digital marketing and data analytics from Boston’s Emerson College.

Graziele Grilo, MSc, is responsible for the overall management of several studies at IGTC related to tobacco advertising and packaging, tobacco-related disparities, and policy evaluation, leading and supporting the writing of manuscripts, abstracts, factsheets, and reports. She also acts as IGTC's regional lead and partner liaison for all matters related to Latin American countries. Grazi also manages and facilitates some of our leadership trainings, which focus on increasing capacity building and leadership skills for the implementation of tobacco control policies in low- and middle-income countries. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from State University of Campinas, Brazil, and earned her master of science in women’s and gender studies at Towson University. Before joining the Institute, she worked on a qualitative study to identify factors contributing to gender-based violence and sexual risk (STIs/HIV) for female university undergraduate students in Ethiopia. As a graduate student, she managed the Arts Integration Institute at Towson University, helping to develop and implement a partnership with the Refugee Youth Project and Patterson High School in Baltimore City. Grilo is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

Jeffrey Hardesty is an Assistant Scientist in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society. He received his Master of Public Health degree with a concentration in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  

 

His work at the Institute focuses on the potential benefits and unintended consequences of domestic and international e-cigarette and tobacco policies. His current projects include the Vaping and Patterns of E-cigarette use Research Study (VAPER Study), a prospective cohort study of e-cigarette users in the U.S. He has authored state of the evidence reports on raising the minimum age of purchase of tobacco products from 18 to 21 and banning or restricting flavored tobacco products. His past work focused on pictorial health warning labels in China and Indonesia.

Reiley Hartmuller, BS, works on the Tobacco Pack Surveillance System (TPackSS) and other research projects. She interned at the National Cancer Institute’s Behavioral Research Program, examining demographic factors associated with dual use of cigarettes and e-cigarettes among young adults, as well as how harm perceptions of e-cigarettes and cigarettes differ based on the type of user. She graduated from the University of Maryland – College Park with a BS in Community Health.

Bekir Kaplan, MD, is currently a senior biostatistician at IGTC. His research at the Institute focuses on cigarette health warning labels, compliance with smoke-free legislation in Turkey and the effects of toxins from waterpipe (hookah) smoke in real-world setting. Kaplan received his medical doctorate in 2007 and a public health specialist degree from Hacettepe University in 2011. He previously worked at the Turkish Ministry of Health in Ankara between 2012 and 2015 where he was in charge of conducting several national surveys on behalf of the Ministry of Health.

Ryan Kennedy is an associate professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society and holds a position with the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo. He studied public health and health psychology at the University of Waterloo and completed a post-doc at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to returning to academia, Dr. Kennedy worked in a local health unit in Ontario in tobacco control and cancer prevention.

Kennedy's research interests include: how to design better health warning labels; how to best measure compliance with tobacco control laws, including smoke-free and point-of sale promotions; and, regulations related to emerging nicotine products such as e-cigarettes.

Qinghua Nian, PhD, leads and supports quantitative data management and analysis, complex study designs, and the writing of fact sheets, reports, abstracts, and manuscripts. She also acts as IGTC's country lead and partner liaison for all matters related to China. Prior to joining IGTC, she worked at Miami University as a senior statistician and data specialist where she led and oversaw research design, collection and analyses of quantitative data, and preparation of reports for a variety of state- and federally-funded projects. Nian received her doctoral degree in urban affairs and public policy and her master's in economics from the University of Delaware at Newark, Delaware.

Brian Shea, BA, is responsible for developing and implementing communication strategies to effectively disseminate the work of the Institute through multiple channels, including the web and electronic media. He is also involved with managing IGTC's social media accounts. Shea holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Allegheny College.

Stephen Tamplin is an associate scientist in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society. His work at the institute focuses on projects related to tobacco control policy, program development and implementation in low- and middle-income countries including Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, among others. He has served as a private consultant on environment, health and development issues, and his clients have included the World Health Organization, the U.K. Department for International Development, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the University of Western Sydney, Australia.

His professional career has included long-term assignments with the World Health Organization (18 years in the Western Pacific Region where he served as the Regional Focal Point for Tobacco Control from 1998-2002), the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (12 years) and the West Virginia Air Pollution Control Commission (4 years). He has broad-based public health and environment experience in the United States, Asia and the Pacific covering a range of technical disciplines including tobacco control, air and water pollution control, chemical safety and hazardous waste management, and health promotion.

Tuo-Yen Tseng, PhD, works on a project examining cigarette brand variants sold in Mexico and Indonesia and leads projects related to e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products and nicotine pouches in the Bloomberg Initiative priority countries. She has previously worked with IGTC on a number of projects, including serving as a teaching assistant for part of our Global Tobacco Control Certificate Program. Tuo-Yen completed her PhD requirements in social and behavioral sciences at the Bloomberg School of Public Health in January 2022.

Emma Walker (she/her) is a Senior Research Program Coordinator for the Institute for Global Tobacco Control. She currently works on IGTC projects in China, India, and Turkey. She received her MEd in Quantitative Methods at Vanderbilt University. At Vanderbilt University, she was a graduate research assistant for the LGBTQ+ Policy Lab and Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations. She has conducted research in both quantitative and qualitative methods. She received her BA in psychology from The Ohio State University.
 

Kevin Welding is an Associate Scientist in the Department of Health, Behavior & Society and the Associate Director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control. He received his PhD in Economics from University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the faculty in the Department of Health, Behavior & Society, Welding worked as a Senior Biostatistician at IGTC where he led the analysis of the Tobacco Pack Surveillance System (TPackSS) to study the pricing and marketing strategies of the tobacco industry in low- and middle-income countries.

Welding's research broadly focuses on the surveillance and compliance of governments and corporations to international treaties and country-specific policies, respectively. His research includes investigations into the tobacco industry's use of packaging for marketing purposes, the strategic pricing of illicit and legal products, and the estimation of the size of illicit markets. Recently, he has evaluated how the emerging market of e-cigarettes has influenced consumer behavior and industry actions.