Erika S. Trapl

Erika S. Trapl is a Professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine. She also serves as Director of the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods and Associate Director for Community Outreach at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research focuses on multi-level determinants of chronic disease prevention, particularly tobacco control, cancer prevention, and food environment interventions. She holds editorial roles in journals like Cancer Causes and Control and Health Behavior Research.

Dr. Trapl earned her PhD in Epidemiology from Case Western Reserve University (2007), following a MS (2004) and BA (2000) in Sociology from the same institution. Her work has been funded by the FDA and NIH, emphasizing community engagement with marginalized populations including LGBTQ+ communities and low-income smokers.

Her research innovations include developing ground-truthed city-wide food and tobacco retail databases, and examining social/environmental influences on health behaviors. She mentors MPH and PhD students, with trainees advancing to academic and industry roles such as Assistant Professorships and positions at IBM.

Current initiatives include cancer screening in community settings and extending tobacco control research to emerging product categories like flavored cigarillos. Her work bridges rigorous epidemiological methods with actionable public health interventions.