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NORC at the University Chicago

Sherry Emery

Pronouns: She/Her

Director
Social Data Collaboratory
Senior Fellow
Public Health
Sherry is a leading researcher on the effects of social media on tobacco and other substance use.

Sherry is the director of NORC’s Social Data Collaboratory. Her interdisciplinary research applies the approaches of health communication, data science, and public policy to understand how both traditional and new media influence health behavior. For over a two decades, she has focused on the roles that tobacco control and other tobacco-related advertising play in shaping attitudes, beliefs, and tobacco-use behaviors among youth and adults. Since 2010, her research scope has expanded to include examinations of the impact of numerous public health media campaigns, including illicit drug use prevention, obesity prevention, mental health promotion, and vaccine promotion campaigns, as well how pharmaceutical advertising affects health care utilization.

Sherry serves or has served as the principal investigator on research studies funded by the National Cancer Institute; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the State of California; and the Truth Initiative.

Before joining NORC with her team in July 2016, Sherry was a senior research scientist at the Institute for Health Research and Policy (IHRP), where she established and directed the Health Media Collaboratory (now NORC’s Social Data Collaboratory) in 2011. She was an IHRP Fellow and a Research Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health.

Project Contributions

How Right Now / Qué Hacer Ahora

A communication initiative to increase people’s resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic

Client:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Foundation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Using Innovative Machine Learning to Detect Support and Opposition to E-Cigarette Use Prevention Messaging on Twitter and TikTok

First study to examine the content, sources, and patterns of diffusion of E-cigarette prevention campaigns

Client:

National Cancer Institute

Smoke-Free Screens Initiative

Updating surveillance of on-screen tobacco imagery after pandemic-driven changes in video viewing

Client:

Truth Initiative

Publications

Research Library & Findings