Unboxing IQOS: History, risk perceptions, and clinical implications

Pam Ling is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. Her research is on tobacco, media, and social marketing with an emphasis on young people. She focuses on understanding how tobacco marketing encourages youth and young adults to initiate tobacco use, and counter-engineering these strategies to improve tobacco control programs. She conducts research on marketing of smokeless tobacco products and other new and alternative tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes. The goal of this work is to use market research strategies to improve clinical, policy, and public health interventions. She also directs the Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Training Program and sees patients as a primary care provider.

Minji Kim is a postdoctoral fellow at Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE), University of California, San Francisco. Kim's research focuses on targeted and tailored health communication. Kim's recent project include examining targeted marketing and counter-marketing of emerging tobacco products, and how that impacts vulnerable populations. First, she is actively engaging in tobacco control policy by making public comments and publishing on novel tobacco product marketing, such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, including IQOS (Philip Morris International). Second, Kim is working with under-served Asian American community to develop culturally appropriate anti-tobacco intervention. She is also is examining the effects of psychographic targeting strategy, such as using peer groups that share values and social identity, in tobacco marketing and counter-marketing messages for youth and young adults. Kim received a Ph.D. in Communication from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Prior to her academic life, she worked as an associate consultant at The Boston Consulting Group’s Seoul office.