English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
Esperanto
French
German
Greek
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
UrduAssociate Professor, Division of Epidemiology and Population Health Sciences, Department of Public Health Sciences
Dr. Asfar is an internationally known expert on reducing tobacco use and related deaths, and is deeply committed to improving smoking cessation treatments in disadvantaged and high-risk populations. Dr. Asfar is principal investigator on several efforts to advance health communications strategies to limit tobacco use among children and young adults.
In 2002, I began working at the Syrian Center for Tobacco Studies, which is funded by the NIH. Smoking in Syria was a big public health problem — almost 57% of men and 20% of women smoked, but tobacco treatment was not available. I saw the great need to improve tobacco prevention and treatment and never stopped doing it.
More recently, I have been working to develop warning labels for electronic cigarettes. We needed to figure out how best to communicate the risks, including toxicology, addiction, respiratory diseases, and other issues. If younger generations begin using electronic cigarettes, decades of tobacco control progress could be jeopardized.
More than 16 million adults in the United States have a disease caused by smoking cigarettes, and smoking-related illnesses lead to half a million deaths each year. In addition, the dramatic increase in youth e-cigarettes use is a major public health problem.
I think our big success in reducing cigarette smoking (from 50% in 1964 to 17% in 2021) came from improving access to treatment, eliminating exposure to secondhand smoke, and tobacco counter-marketing campaigns. We need to keep pursuing these strategies.
