Zinzi Bailey
University of Minnesota, MN·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Cigarette and smokeless tobacco use among U.S. youth has declined, but vaping, the use of electronic cigarettes, has risen sharply.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Social Science
- Topics
electronic cigarettes
e-cigarettes
vaping
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Relate the density of tobacco and e-cigarette stores around schools, and how close they are, to county-level youth e-cigarette use and marketing exposure in Florida, including differences by demographics and racial/ethnic segregation.
- Explore where, how, why and from whom Florida youth obtain e-cigarettes, and how they encounter retailers and marketing, using participatory mapping and focus groups across neighborhoods.
- Test whether Tobacco 21 combined with tobacco retail licensing reduces youth vaping and marketing exposure more than Tobacco 21 alone, using a three-county natural experiment with interrupted time series and difference-in-differences.
More about the research
Recent vaping-related lung injuries and deaths, and the first animal studies linking vaping to cancer, make youth e-cigarette use an urgent concern. This project asks how stores, marketing and local laws shape young people's access to e-cigarettes in Florida. It also asks whether these patterns differ by neighborhood makeup and racial/ethnic segregation.
Why it matters
Youth vaping has risen sharply, and recent lung injuries and cancer findings in animals raise concern. This work could give local and state lawmakers evidence on whether combining a minimum purchase age of 21 with retailer licensing better reduces youth e-cigarette use. It could also show how store placement near schools affects youth in different communities, informing policies aimed at reducing health disparities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Daniel Giovenco
Columbia University, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology
Measure how much tobacco retailer density falls under license-capping policies in San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York City, using archival tobacco retail licensing data.
Yan Wang
George Washington University, DC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Characterize trajectories in tobacco use over time among US adults, including use of distinct products, any product, multiple products and flavored products, using the nationally representative longitudinal PATH cohort.
Neal Doran
University of California-San Diego, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Identify modifiable social, contextual and individual risk factors that predict e-cigarette initiation and progression in children, using repeated assessments from the ABCD cohort of youth ages 9 to 19.
The school
University of Minnesota: 88 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 722 research doctorates a year.
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