“So many times, tobacco treatment doesn’t get addressed and those with mental health conditions and substance use disorders continue to smoke at much higher rates,” explains UConn School of Social Work doctoral candidate Elizabeth “Liz” Jurczak Goldsborough. “Treating tobacco use alongside other substance use is a more holistic approach to care and can improve both quality of life and longevity of the groups that social workers serve.”
Goldsborough, who is also a predoctoral fellow in the NIH/NIDA-funded Behavioral Sciences Training in Drug Abuse Research (BST) program at New York University, focuses her research on the intersection of tobacco use and substance use treatment—an area she says is often overlooked.
Understanding the Bigger Picture
In a recent study, “Examining the bidirectional relationship between food insecurity and cigarette smoking: Evidence from a cross-lagged panel analysis,” published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, 2026, Goldsborough and her colleagues examined the relationship between food insecurity and cigarette smoking among mothers participating in the collaborative Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study.
Their goal was to better understand a long-observed connection: does spending money on cigarettes contribute to food insecurity, or does the stress of food insecurity lead to increased smoking?
“What we found was that it’s not smoking causing food insecurity—or food insecurity causing smoking,” Goldsborough explains. “This widely observed link may instead be explained by underlying poverty, financial stress, and mental health challenges, since both depression and economic hardship affect food access and smoking behavior.”
The findings highlight a more complex reality—one in which structural factors, rather than individual choices alone, shape health outcomes.
Improving Treatment in Practice
That systems-level perspective carries into Goldsborough’s dissertation, tentatively titled “Tobacco Treatment Practices in Substance Use Care Settings: Provider and Organizational Factors.” Her research examines how treatment programs address tobacco use—an often-overlooked component of substance use care.
Despite strong evidence supporting integrated treatment, she found that tobacco care is not consistently implemented by behavioral health providers in Connecticut.
In a survey of 374 providers, more than 87% reported offering tobacco treatment at least some of the time. However, many also reported gaps in knowledge, attitudes, and confidence—factors that influence how often they provide care.
“These are things we can change,” Goldsborough says. “If we improve training, build provider confidence, and create supportive organizational policies, we can strengthen how tobacco treatment is delivered.”
She emphasizes that social work education should include competency-based tobacco treatment training, while agencies should adopt clear policies that support evidence-based care.
From Practice to Research
Goldsborough’s commitment to improving systems is rooted in her own experience. A first-generation college student, she grew up in Poland and New York City. After earning her MSW from Rutgers University, she worked as a medical social worker and later as a clinical research counselor—experiences that shaped her interest in research.
Source: https://today.uconn.edu/2026/04/the-overlooked-addiction-uconn-researcher-targets-tobacco-use-in-substance-use-care/