Dr Allison Ford

Associate Professor

Institute for Social Marketing University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Dr Allison Ford

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About me

Dr Allison Ford is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Social Marketing and Health, University of Stirling. Specialising in qualitative methods, her research focuses on understanding health behaviours, the impact of marketing on health, evaluating health interventions and providing evidence for policy. She has conducted studies on tobacco prevention, cessation and harm reduction, alcohol use, bereavement from substance use, food marketing, and attitudes towards Covid-19 vaccination. She has a track record of conducting research with disadvantaged populations and leads the Scottish arm and mixed-methods process evaluation of an NIHR-funded RCT exploring e-cigarettes vs usual care for smoking cessation offered at homeless centres. She also leads a package of work on e-cigarettes and emerging nicotine products and their marketing, and a DHSC-funded study exploring women’s access and attitudes to contraception. She has been an investigator of the Youth Tobacco Policy Survey (now the Youth E-cigarettes Policy Survey) since 2013. In June 2022 Allison took over as the University of Stirling lead and Co-Investigator in the NIHR Public Health Policy Research Unit.

Allison sits on the University of Stirling's NHS, Invasive or Clinical Research (NICR) Ethics Committee. Previous roles include: Associate Editor for Nicotine and Tobacco Research; board member for the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco Europe; and module co-ordinator for the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies (UKCTAS)/SPECTRUM CPD – Nicotine and Tobacco: Current Issues, Policy and Practice.

Tobacco control, smoking cessation, adolescent smoking, tobacco and e-cigarette marketing, harm reduction, electronic cigarettes, qualitative research, vulnerable groups

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