David Abrams
Executive Director, Schroeder Institute
Dr. David B. Abrams is Executive Director of the Steven A. Schroeder National Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the American Legacy Foundation®. The Schroeder Institute advances the science of understanding tobacco use behavior with emphasis on collaboration in discovering extraordinary opportunities to inform basic mechanisms, practice and policy to accelerate the reduction in the prevalence of tobacco use behavior in the U.S. population.
Dr. Abrams is a licensed clinical health psychologist, specializing in treatment of addictive behavior. His primary interest is in fostering the systems integration of bio-medical, socio-behavioral and ecologic-public health models to understand and to eliminate tobacco use behavior at the population level.
Joining Brown University Medical School in 1978, Dr. Abrams became Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Professor of Community Health. He was the founding Director of The Transdisciplinary Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine for 16 years until 2004. From 2005-2008, Dr. Abrams directed the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in its mission to stimulate the conduct of and communicate the value of behavioral and social sciences research contributions to improving our nation's health.
Dr. Abrams has published more than 220 scholarly articles, and has been an Investigator on more than 60 NIH research grants. He holds a B.Sc. (honors) degree in computer science and psychology from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Dr. Abrams is a Fellow and past President of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and a recipient of the Society’s Distinguished Scientist Award, Distinguished Service Award and Distinguished Research Mentor Award. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. He is a past member of the Board of Scientific Advisors of the National Cancer Institute and of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Transdisciplinary Tobacco Etiology Research Network. Dr. Abrams is recipient of the 2008 Joseph W. Cullen Memorial Award from the American Society for Preventive Oncology (ASPO), for his lifelong work and contributions to tobacco control research from basic science to policy.