Richmond Center Investigators

Mr. Gottlieb is a public health and research attorney who has worked in the field of tobacco control for 28 years. He is the executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law where he also teaches public health advocacy as an adjunct professor. His research has largely focused on legal and regulatory interventions to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with tobacco use and exposure with an emphasis on regulation and the impact of litigation. He is also active in gun violence prevention and mitigating the harms from predatory gambling products.

Dr. Groner is the PI for the Vascular Endothelial Status project and active in the Measurement Core of the AAP Richmond Center. Dr. Groner is a practicing pediatrician, a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, and an attending physician in the Primary Care Network at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. She is also the Director of the Academic General Pediatrics Fellowship Program at Nationwide Children's. Dr. Groner's research focuses on SHS exposure during childhood as a risk factor for vascular changes which can lead to cardiovascular disease during adulthood. Her previous funding has been through the National Institutes of Health, the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute, and the American Lung Association, among others. Dr. Groner is also active at her institution in pediatric residency training in protecting children from SHS and decreasing parental tobacco use. Dr. Groner is the Chair of the AAP Section on Tobacco Control.

Dr. Klein is the Scientific Director of the AAP Richmond Center. Dr. Klein is a Professor and Senior Associate Head of the Department of Pediatrics at the Univeristy of Illinois - Chicago. He is an expert in adolescent medicine and child and adolescent health services research. His research addresses tobacco prevention and control, access and quality of care, obesity screening in primary care, and other child and adolescent preventive services. 
 
Dr. Klein attended Brandeis University, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his residency in pediatrics and a chief residency at the Boston Floating Hospital, New England Medical Center, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He joined the University of Rochester faculty in 1992 where he served as Associate Chair for Community and Government Affairs in the Department of Pediatrics and as Professor of Pediatrics, Preventive and Community Medicine, and Family Medicine. He also served as an Associate Executive Director of the AAP from 2009-2017.

Dr. Sharon McGrath-Morrow is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine with a joint appointment in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. McGrath-Morrow is a pediatric pulmonologist and clinician scientist who runs a translational laboratory modeling neonatal lung injury. Her research interests include understanding the neonatal immune response to acute lung injury, respiratory outcomes in preterm infants with chronic lung disease and the impact of secondhand and thirdhand smoke on postnatal lung growth and adult lung function. Her work is funded by National Institutes of Health and the American Academy of Pediatrics Julius B. Richmond Center. She is also the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Pulmonary Fellowship Director.

Dr. McMillen serves as Investigator within the AAP Julius B. Richmond Center. He investigates the impact of tobacco control policies and counseling on tobacco exposure. His research has been published in Pediatrics, the New England Journal of Medicine, the American Journal of Public Health, JAMA Internal Medicine, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, Public Health Reports, Academic Pediatrics, the Journal of Rural Health, the Journal of Environmental and Public Health, the Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association, and Psychological Record. Dr. McMillen is a Professor with a joint appointment with the Social Science Research Center and the Department of Psychology at Mississippi State University.

Dr. Tanski is the PI of the Nanotechnology measurement of tobacco smoke project for the AAP Richmond Center. Dr. Tanski is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and a practicing pediatrician at the Children's Hospital at Dartmouth of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Working within the Cancer Risk Behaviors Group at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth, her current research endeavors focus on visual media influences on adolescent smoking and drinking, and communication between pediatric clinicians and parents regarding SHS exposure of children. Dr. Tanski is past-Chair the AAP Tobacco Consortium, a national group of researchers who take a family-centered approach to tobacco control issues that affect children. Previously, she has been involved in a number of epidemiologic studies examining parents' patterns of smoking and cessation attempts, parents' rules against smoking in homes and vehicles, and parents' attitudes towards pediatric practitioners' advice and assistance with quit attempts.

Dr. Debra Waldron, Senior Vice President, Healthy and Resilient Children, Youth, and Families for American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), is a pediatric clinician and public health leader with thirty years’ experience in health care delivery systems, public/population health practice, and health policy. Dr Waldron oversees multiple programs and initiatives at the AAP that address bio-psycho-social aspects of child, adolescent, young adult, and family health, and serves as the Principal Investigator of an extensive portfolio of related federal and privately funded grants. Dr Waldron has also served in the US Department of Health and Human Services as the Director of the Division of Services for Children with Special Health Needs in the Health Resources and Services Administration. There she oversaw the national program focused on improving the system of care for children, youth, and families with special health needs. Additionally, as Vice Chair of Child Health Policy and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Iowa, Dr Waldron led the redesign of Iowa’s system of coordinated, family centered care for children and youth with special health needs. During her tenure as President of the Iowa chapter of the AAP, she served on multiple state level committees. Her areas of interest are family engagement, early childhood systems, and integrated care models.

Dr. Wilson is a Debra and Leon Black Professor, Division Chief of General Pediatrics, and Vice-Chair for Clinical and Translational Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Kravis Children's Hospital in New York, NY. Dr. Wilson received her undergraduate degree at St. Lawrence University, and her Master's in Public Health and MD at the University of Rochester.

Dr. Wilson's research interests include the impact of secondhand tobacco smoke (SHS) on children, and how best to help reduce their exposure. She also studies hospitalizations for respiratory illness, and the impact of SHS on inflammatory markers and development of asthma in children hospitalized for bronchiolitis. She has an R01 from the National Cancer Institute to study an inpatient parent cessation and exposure reduction intervention, and she is PI of the AAP Richmond Center Respiratory Illness and Secondhand Smoke Exposure in Kids (RISSK) project which studies biomarkers of inflammation in smoke-exposed children, and a Co-PI on the AAP Richmond Center Measurement Core project. Dr. Wilson is the Chair of the AAP Tobacco Consortium, past-chair of the AAP Section on Tobacco Control, a member of the Executive Committee of the Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings network, and the Research Chair of the Academic Pediatric Association.

Dr. Winickoff is a practicing pediatrician and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He has training and experience in health services research, medical ethics, neurobiology, statistics, and behavioral theory. Dr. Winickoff has drafted key tobacco control policy for the AAP, the American Medical Association, and the American Pediatric Association. He has served as a scientific advisor to the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program, Indiana Tobacco Control Program, and the US Surgeon General through the Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health. He is also past-chair of the AAP Tobacco Consortium. The national program he developed out of his research through the AAP Pediatric Research in Office Settings program is known as CEASE — Clinical Effort Against Secondhand Smoke Exposure — and program materials are available for free at  www.ceasetobacco.org.