Experts Available to Comment on Chantix and Zyban

If you are covering the story on the Food and Drug Administration’s new requirement for manufacturers to put a boxed warning on the prescribing information for the smoking cessation medications Chantix and Zyban, experts at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey are available to comment.

Dr. Cynthia Paige is a physician who practices family medicine and teaches smoking cessation at the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School. Dr. Paige can speak to the caution she uses when considering these medications for patients.

Jonathan Foulds, PhD, the director of the Tobacco Dependence Program at the UMDNJ-School of Public Health, conducted the first placebo-controlled trials of the nicotine patch in the UK and was an investigator on the world’s first clinical trial to directly compare the effects of the nicotine patch, gum, nasal spray and inhaler. He has been a consultant to the World Health Organization and has published over 50 papers on tobacco dependence.

Dr. Michael Steinberg is the medical director at the Tobacco Dependence Program and a faculty member of the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the School of Public Health. His clinical and research interests include clinical preventive services and tobacco treatment in primary care and hospital settings, and he has published extensively on tobacco dependence and treatment.

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) is the nation’s largest free-standing public health sciences university with nearly 5,700 students attending the state’s three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and its only school of public health on five campuses. Annually, there are more than two million patient visits at UMDNJ facilities and faculty practices at campuses in Newark, New Brunswick/Piscataway, Scotch Plains, Camden and Stratford. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral HealthCare, a statewide mental health and addiction services network.

Source: University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)