Rate My Professor Jasjit Ahluwalia

Jasjit S. Ahluwalia, MD, MPH, MS, is a tenured Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences in the Brown University School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at the Alpert Medical School. He also serves as Director of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences at the Legorreta Cancer Center and Deputy Director of the NIH-funded Center on Addiction, Disparities, and Equity (CADRE) since 2019. Ahluwalia received his BA in Biochemistry from New York University in 1983, a combined MD and MPH from Tulane University Schools of Medicine and Public Health and Tropical Medicine in 1987, completed an internal medicine residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1987 to 1990, earned an MS in Health Policy from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 1992 during a fellowship in clinical epidemiology, and was awarded an MA ad eundem from Brown University in 2018.

His distinguished career includes positions as Assistant Professor at Emory University School of Medicine and Rollins School of Public Health from 1992 to 1997; Chair and Sosland Family Endowed Professor of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Kansas Medical Center from 2001 to 2005; multiple leadership roles at the University of Minnesota from 2005 to 2015, including Professor of Internal Medicine, Director of the Center for Health Equity, and Associate Director of the Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute; and Dean of Rutgers School of Public Health from 2015 to 2016. Ahluwalia's research centers on nicotine addiction and smoking cessation, especially among African American smokers, harm reduction using e-cigarettes in Latinx and African American tobacco users, health disparities, minority health, social determinants of health, addiction, cancer prevention, and global health projects in Spain and India. As principal investigator, he has obtained $23 million in extramural grants and served as co-investigator on over $115 million, producing more than 400 manuscripts. Key publications include "Sustained-release bupropion for smoking cessation in African Americans: a randomized controlled trial" (JAMA, 2002), "Progression to established smoking: The influence of tobacco marketing" (American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2002), and recent studies on e-cigarette risk perception and smokeless tobacco in India. Major awards encompass the Society of Behavioral Medicine Health Equity Lifetime Achievement Award (2023), Fellow of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (2018), APTR Duncan Clark Award (2014), APHA Lifetime Achievement Award for tobacco research (2011), ASPO Joe Cullen Award (2010), and SGIM Herbert W. Nickens Award (2009). He has chaired the NIH Health Disparities and Equity Promotion study section, served on the National Advisory Council on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health, and held board positions with the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, Society of Behavioral Medicine, and others.