The overarching goal of this application for a Phase 3 Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) award is to firmly establish the Vermont Center on Behavior and Health (VCBH) at the University of Vermont (UVM) as a sustainable center of research excellence. 

The VCBH made considerable progress during Phases 1 and 2 towards becoming a vibrant and sustainable center. VCBH established a strong record of external grant support and peer-reviewed publications with $165.1 million in total cumulative funding, including $18.3 million from awards to COBRE Project Leaders (PLs), and 917 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including 515 listing PLs as 1st or co-authors. PLs succeeded in obtaining NIH, foundation, and industry awards as PIs, Project PIs, and Co-Is. Other Phase 1 and 2 notable accomplishments included establishing an NIH-supported UVM Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science with an initial P50 award that was renewed as a U54, twice renewing an NIH T32 training award in clinical addictions research now in years 31-36, and establishing the new HRSA-supported UVM Center on Rural Addiction and a new NIH T32 training award in neurobiological addiction research. VCBH cores continue to support a vibrant monthly lecture series, annual national conferences, and guest editorship of an annual special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Preventive Medicine based on the conferences. VCBH collaborations with other COBREs continue to grow, with VCBH PI Dr. Higgins chairing two COBRE External Advisory Committees and serving as a member of a third. 

In Phase 3, we propose to sustain VCBH competitiveness in obtaining external grant support and fostering new research and dissemination initiatives. We will continue mentoring early career investigators, leveraging our three cores that have strong institutional support and broad reach, and coalescing VCBH collaborations around five areas of scientific strength, each with its own working group. An innovative Pilot Project Program will be leveraged to support early-career investigators and generate preliminary data for grant applications in current areas of strength and to foster new research directions. We are confident that with Phase 3 support, VCBH is well positioned to succeed as a sustainable, impactful, multidisciplinary center of research excellence.

Aim 1: Recruit and organize the multidisciplinary senior and early-career faculty and advisors necessary to lead and sustain the VCBH mission.

Aim 2: Provide promising early-career faculty with the research opportunities, mentoring, and career development support necessary to establish themselves as successful, independent investigators.

Aim 3: Establish an Administrative Core that effectively leads and coordinates a multidisciplinary research center of excellence, trains the next generation of scholars, and obtains the external funding necessary to sustain the VCBH beyond COBRE support.

Aim 4: Establish a research core that supports the efforts of investigators in the VCBH and beyond to study behavior and health relationships pertinent to the VCBH mission. The Behavioral Economics and Intervention Sciences Core (Core B) consists of the following three modules of expertise:

(a) A Decision-Making component that supports research strategies and instruments to examine individual differences in biases and deficiencies in decision-making (e.g., temporal discounting, other executive functions) using conventional paper-and-pencil and laptop assessment platforms, as well as those that leverage functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) testing.

(b) An Intervention Sciences component that (i) assists with development and evaluation of behavior change interventions, and (ii) supports the integration of emerging technologies with those interventions;

(c) An Economic Modeling component that assists with developing and implementing cost-effectiveness analyses for the intervention studies.

Aim 5: Establish a Collaboration, Dissemination, and Education Core (Core C) that facilitates local, state, national, and international impact and educates the next generation of scholars in Behavior and Health by:

(a) Nurturing and coordinating bi-directional collaborative relationships with (i) Vermont leaders in health care policy and delivery, (ii) a network of universities and research institutes located in other IDeA states (Brown University, University of Kentucky, Dartmouth, University of Nebraska, Laureate Institute for Brain Research), non-IDEA states (Johns Hopkins University, State University of New York at Buffalo, Wayne State University), and internationally (University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland; Oviedo University, Oviedo, Spain; Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda) where there is strong interest and expertise in the area of behavior and health;

(b) Disseminating new knowledge on behavior and health through the annual VCBH national conference and annual Special Issues of the peer-reviewed journal Preventive Medicine;

(c) Educating the next generation of scholars in the area of behavior and health through the VCBH monthly lecture series, seminars, and workshops offered at UVM and also streamed live to collaborators and interested others.

VCBH is the home of the UVM Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS), one of nine such centers in the U.S. that are supported through a cooperative agreement of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act has given the federal government (i.e., FDA) the authority to bring science-based regulation to the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of tobacco products. UVM and the other TCORS centers will provide scientific expertise relevant to the FDA’s regulatory mission. 

VCBH addresses one of the crosscutting and two of the specific research priorities of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products in carrying out its charge of regulating tobacco products. We approach these priorities using the concepts, principles, and methods of behavioral economics and behavioral pharmacology. We work closely with collaborators and consultants from Brown University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Minnesota, and University of Pittsburgh. 

We will continue our crosscutting integrative theme of vulnerable populations focusing on two FDA Center for Tobacco Products scientific domains: addiction and behavior. More specifically, we plan to expand our center's research on nicotine standards for cigarettes and addiction risk in populations already at an increased risk for:

• cigarette smoking,
• addiction, and
• smoking-related adverse health outcomes, including socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, individuals with other substance use disorders, and individuals with mental illness.

We will extend our research applying the principles and methods of behavioral economics, behavioral pharmacology, and neuroimaging to examine the effects of reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes on cigarette smoking in vulnerable populations with and without substitute non-combusted nicotine products readily available. We will also examine whether flavors enhance appeal of the non-combusted alternative.