Lilianna Phan, PhD, MPH, MS
she/her/hers
Founder, Principal Investigator
Degree
- PhD, Behavioral and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Maryland College Park
- MPH, Social and Behavioral Sciences, College of Public Health, Temple University
- MS, Biomedical Sciences, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
- BS, Psychology, Saint Joseph's University
Research Interests: Social Determinants of Health; Health Disparities; Community-Engaged Research; Tobacco Prevention and Control; Tobacco-Related Health Disparities; Tobacco Regulatory Science; Health Communication; Racism and Discrimination.
Dr. Lilianna Phan, PhD, MPH, MS, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health and Prevention at Drexel University, holding a joint appointment in the Division of Graduate Nursing. Joining through the Drexel FIRST program, she focuses her research on tobacco use disparities, utilizing health communication science to reduce these gaps and advance health equity. Dr. Phan concentrates on preventing and reducing commercial tobacco use among racially minoritized populations, especially young adults. Employing community-engaged, mixed-methods, and experimental approaches, including eye-tracking, she explores psychosocial factors associated with tobacco use and develops interventions.
In her ongoing NIH/FDA-funded career development award, she evaluates cigarillo smoking prevention messages among Black young adults, addressing the elevated prevalence linked to targeted tobacco industry marketing. Before Drexel, Dr. Phan was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), receiving the 2022 Coleman Research Innovation Award. Her early postdoctoral training at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, focusing on tobacco regulatory science and health communication, earned her the 2020 Richard C. Devereaux Outstanding Young Investigator Award. Recently, she received the 2023 Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco’s Health Equity Network’s Travel Scholarship, also serving on the Network’s evaluation subcommittee.
Lem Phan,
MPHc CHP/MSc HCI-UX
She/her/hers
Lead Designer, Project Coordinator
Lem is a community health advocate, a designer, and a member of my community. She is inspired and motivated by the certainty: build effective designs for women of color's wellness. She is extremely enthusiastic about the potential to achieve design equity - to serve the members of the low-income communities, communities of color, women of color, and to advocate for better health designs and better outcomes.
Marcus Moore,
B.S. Political Science '26
He/him/his
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Co-op student
Marcus is a political science major looking to gain experience in conducting academic research with others and promoting political movements through social media and campaigning. He is great at writing, hard-working, and thorough in his quality work when it comes to conducting research on what he is passionate about. His research interests, politically, include international politics, welfare policy, comparative politics, and social movements.
Eloise Meek,
B.S. Psych '25
They/them/theirs
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Eloise is a 4th year Undergraduate Psychology Student at Drexel University, with a minor in Sociology. As a person, student, activist and employee, they focus on utilizing education, advocacy, interpersonal relationships, and empowerment directly with communities so we can learn and organize with the goal of collective liberation. By collaborating community expertise and academic knowledge and resources we create grounds for real and substantial progress. Above all their work stems from and for social justice with a focus on joy, empowerment, consistent improvement and learning, and the importance of acknowledging and educating all on structural and systemic issues that face us all in different ways.
