Departmental Affiliations
Center & Institute Affiliations
Research Interests
tobacco use; cigarette use; social determinants of health; public education campaigns; campaign effectiveness; mental health and addiction policy; LGBTQ youth
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Experiences & Accomplishments
Tesfa Alexander's career has been largely shaped by his experience designing and leading health behavior change programs at national and local scales. He comes to the Bloomberg School of Public Health from the MITRE Corporation where he was Managing Director of Global and Public Health. Prior to joining MITRE, Alexander served as the Director of Research and Evaluation at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products. In this role, he led a team of social and health scientists who were responsible for developing the scientific foundation for FDA’s national tobacco public education campaigns. He was also responsible for developing studies designed to evaluate the impact of FDA’s tobacco education programs.
Tesfa Alexander has extensive experience leading research studies that draw on social science theories and methods to develop innovative public education programs and inform federal policy decisions. He has also held positions at Battelle Memorial Institute, Ogilvy Advertising and Weber Shandwick where he provided thought leadership to inform the development of effective behavior change marketing tools in health.
Select Publications
Dutra LM, Farrelly MC, Bradfield B, Mekos D, Jones C, Alexander T (2023) Awareness of and receptivity to FDA’s point-of-sale tobacco public education campaign. PLoS ONE 18(7): e0288462.
Morgane Bennett, Jessica Speer, Nathaniel Taylor, Tesfa Alexander, Changes in E-cigarette Use Among Youth and Young Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Insights Into Risk Perceptions and Reasons for Changing Use Behavior, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, Volume 25, Issue 2, February 2023, Pages 350–355,
Sojung Claire Kim, Xiaoquan Zhao, Nate S Brophy, Matthew W Walker, Tesfa N Alexander, Visual Attention to the Source Matters: Using Eye Tracking to Understand the FDA’s ‘Every Try Counts’ Campaign Message Effectiveness, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, Volume 24, Issue 2, February 2022, Pages 280–284,
Erik Crankshaw, Jennifer Gaber, Jamie Guillory, Laurel Curry, Matthew Farrelly, McKinley Saunders, Leah Hoffman, Ollie Ganz, Janine Delahanty, Debra Mekos, Tesfa Alexander, Final Evaluation Findings for This Free Life, a 3-Year, Multi-Market Tobacco Public Education Campaign for Gender and Sexual Minority Young Adults in the United States, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, Volume 24, Issue 1, January 2022, Pages 109–117,
Duke JC, Farrelly MC, Alexander TN, et al. Effect of a National Tobacco Public Education Campaign on Youth’s Risk Perceptions and Beliefs About Smoking. American Journal of Health Promotion. 2017;32(5):1248-1256. doi: