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Jennifer Ellen French
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ATLANTA — The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has awarded Ph.D. candidate Christian Saenz a three-year, $194,457 grant to support research that examines the effects of e-cigarette policies on youth tobacco use.
The grant was awarded through the NIDA Diversity Supplement Program, which is designed to improve the diversity of the research workforce by recruiting and supporting students, post doctorates and eligible investigators from diverse backgrounds, including those from groups underrepresented in the biomedical, behavioral, clinical and social sciences.
The overall goal of the study is to learn how e-cigarettes impact smoking and health, and how policymakers should think about regulating e-cigarettes, according to Saenz. His work will support a larger, multiyear NIH-funded project led by economist Michael Pesko.
“I’m interested in a lot of the same things Dr. Pesko is — health economics, risky health behaviors like substance use — and this grant is a way of allowing him to continue his research by funding a mentee, a student who would work with him on what he’s already doing and help train that student to become a better researcher,” Saenz said. “I’m his mentee.”
Pesko is also Saenz’s dissertation chair. A former associate professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, Pesko recently joined the University of Missouri as the J. Rhoads Foster Professor of Economics. They began working together on the NIDA grant application in spring 2023.
Under the NIDA grant, Saenz will contribute to the research as a co-author. He will help write the manuscripts, conduct the empirical regressions and present the research at conferences. He’s already presented research on FDA drug regulation at conferences, like the American Society of Health Economists conference in San Diego earlier this year, and will soon present at the Atlanta/Athens Health Economists’ workshop, an informal gathering of health economists from Georgia State, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University and the University of Georgia.
“Dr. Pesko gives me a lot of leeway and lets me take the lead on this work,” he said.
Saenz began studying economics after earning an undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
“At first I was interested in basically understanding social and behavioral psychology and why people behave the way they do,” he said. “I ended up wanting to pursue my Ph.D. in economics because I was interested in behavioral economics and its overlap with what I was doing.”
He completed a master’s in economics at Middle Tennessee State University to gain the math coursework he needed to be more competitive in applying to Ph.D. programs and began looking for universities with a strong health economics focus.
“Georgia State ranks well in terms of its economics faculty and their research output,” he said. “The faculty here are a good fit for my research interests. People like Keith Teltser and those affiliated with the Georgia Heath Policy Center do a lot of public health research.”
Saenz admits his career aspirations motivated him to apply for the grant.
“Ideally, my initial job when I graduate would be as an assistant professor at a research university economics department,” he said. “However, finding those positions after graduation can be difficult, and very competitive. With this funding, I have another year to get published. I will add that work to my CV and hopefully be more competitive for those positions.”
Student success is supported in multiple ways by faculty and staff in the Department of Economics and the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.
“We are very proud to say that one of our graduate students has received external funding from the NIH to work on such a policy-relevant topic,” said James Marton, chair of the Department of Economics. “Christian is a great example of the amazing graduate students we have the pleasure of training. Our faculty encourage students to seek out this sort of external recognition and our staff work hard to support their efforts to realize their future goals.”
NOTE: Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01DA045016. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.