{"doi":"10.1093/ntr/ntad162","title":"Guidance for Addressing Conflicts, Bias, and Growth in Early Career Tobacco Regulatory Science Training Through Mentorship","abstract":"Tobacco regulatory science (TRS) is the scientific discipline that supports the evaluation of the risks and benefits of tobacco regulatory decisions and provides a robust scientific foundation for regulatory policies.1 TRS encompasses many disciplines including population science, toxicity, tobacco control policy, pharmacology, product science, and marketing and communications, among others.2,3 The development and evaluation of TRS training programs have been a centerpiece of research funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Tobacco Products (FDA CTP) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 2013, particularly through the Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS), the Center for Evaluation and Coordination of Training and Research in Tobacco Regulatory Science (CECTR), and the Center for Coordination of Analytics, Science, Enhancement, and Logistics in Tobacco Regulatory Science (CASEL). These efforts launched the field of TRS and created a need for new programs to address the unique needs of TRS trainees and their mentors, including training and mentorship programs coordinated for all FDA CTP-funded TRS grantees. To support the professional development of TRS scientists, investigators engaged in the TCORS collaborated initially with CECTR, and now CASEL, on a series of projects to inform TRS training and mentorship. First, Wipfli and colleagues4 outlined TRS-specific domains and competencies characterizing content knowledge and skill levels needed to succeed in the field. Russo and colleagues5 then conducted in-depth interviews with senior and early career scientists to identify characteristics of TRS that make it distinct from other research areas and described the difficulties of mentorship in this field. Di Frances and colleagues6 built on these prior studies by developing, implementing, and evaluating a novel TRS mentor training program. The purpose of this commentary is to build on this catalog of resources by highlighting TRS-specific experiences and challenges that have emerged for trainees, pre- and post-doctoral fellows, and new and early-stage investigators (hereafter collectively referred to as mentees) in the first decade of TRS-funded training through the Tobacco Regulatory Science Program (TRSP) at NIH. It specifically highlights the importance of strong mentoring relationships to meet the unique challenges of conducting TRS research when policies and product landscapes are rapidly changing and topics are often polarizing.7 The commentary describes professional challenges faced by mentees in TRS and includes some mentor and mentee approaches in making informed decisions and problem-solving those challenges. The example scenarios may help future mentees, and their mentors be more aware of evolving challenges in TRS and be more prepared to address them. It is important to include diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in training and mentorship to achieve TRS objectives.8 All mentees should have access to quality, culturally responsive mentorship that offers support, guidance, and encouragement to promote personal and professional growth and inspire novel research ideas and viewpoints. There is robust literature demonstrating that diverse teams are more innovative9 and produce more impactful science.10 The National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) has identified that DEIA is essential for translational science.11 Given the relative newness of TRS and the need for multidisciplinary teams to create the scientific basis for tobacco regulation, the ability to foster effective diverse teams is imperative.12 Moreover, NIH is committed to enhancing DEIA in science through developing a diverse biomedical research workforce; improving the recruitment of underrepresented groups in science, science leadership, and science administration; and implementing approaches to improve the success rate in NIH grant funding that support researchers from diverse background","journal":"Nicotine & Tobacco Research","year":2023,"id":410846,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9634,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":236749,"name":"Andrea C. Villanti","orcid":"0000-0003-3104-966X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":333307,"name":"Christine Pfund","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1034,"name":"Emelia J. Benjamin","orcid":"0000-0003-4076-2336","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":403931,"name":"Rachel Denlinger-Apte","orcid":"0000-0002-3182-7188","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1191392,"name":"Mary L. Garcı́a-Cazarı́n","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":310227,"name":"Jonathan Kwan","orcid":"0000-0002-9125-7623","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292398,"name":"Cassandra A. Stanton","orcid":"0000-0001-5329-6261","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":537909,"name":"Andrea M Stroup","orcid":"0000-0003-2895-460X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":15,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:21:38.940853Z","pmid":"37632690","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}