Dr. Hilary Tindle is a physician scientist, Associate Professor of Medicine, and Founding Director of ViTAL, the Vanderbilt Center for Tobacco, Addiction and Lifestyle. The ViTAL Centerleverages e-health and the electronic health record (EHR) to identify, engage, and treat tobacco users of all ages. ViTAL conducts comparative effectiveness research to identify scalable methods of reaching all patients, while also personalizing care by incorporating genetic and other information into treatment decisions

A nationally-recognized expert in smoking cessation, Dr. Tindle recently joined the faculty of Vanderbilt after 9 years as a clinical investigator at the University of Pittsburgh, from 2005-2014. During this time she served as the PI of two NIH-sponsored comparative effectiveness RCTs for smoking cessation, and as the site PI for a 3rd NIH-sponsored multi-center RCT. In the past 3 years she has presided over the successful recruitment and retention of over 1200 research participants. Dr. Tindle was particularly attracted to programs at Vanderbilt, such as BioVU and the PCORI-sponsored Clinical Data Research Network, that facilitate her vision of applying a patient-centered approach to tobacco control for large populations. Her new clinical program, the Tobacco Treatment Service, will leverage the strengths of the EHR and the Tennessee state quitline through an “eReferral” program to further clinical, educational, and research efforts. These efforts mirror and extend the large scale treatment and eReferral initiatives that Dr. Tindle founded and continues to foster in Pennsylvania with UPMC and the PA state quitline. She is also working with Vanderbilt investigators to launch a CMS-sponsored coordinated care approach to tobacco control in 2015.

Dr. Tindle is a contributing author to the 2014 50th Anniversary Surgeon General’s Report and the 2015 NCCN Smoking Cessation Guidelines for cancer patients. In 2015 she joined the Advisory Board of the North American Quitline Consortium (NAQC) to facilitate eReferrals between health care systems and state quitlines, among other massive synergistic treatment programs. Throughout her career, she has been captivated by the role of psychological processes--from expectations that individuals hold of their own future to overt mental illness-- in influencing smoking and other behaviors, and has documented the impact of these processes on smoking, chronic disease, and death. In 2013, Penguin published her book Up: How Positive Outlook Can Transform Our Health and Aging. Written for a general audience, Up was featured in the NYT twice and was selected by the Wall Street Journal’s year-end review as one of the five best books on healthy aging in 2013, among other accolades. At Vanderbilt Dr. Tindle has been nominated for a Chancellor’s Chair in Medicine to support her continued work in smoking cessation and the prevention of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other behaviorally-driven disease burden.