Mignonne C. Guy, PhD

Dr. Mignonne C. Guy is an professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Population Health and an affiliate professor in the Department of African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research interests center on behavioral, social and structural determinants that contribute to tobacco-related health inequities among minoritized populations and other marginalized groups. Recently, she has expanded her research focus to examine the ways in which systemic racism is reproduced in biomedical and health equity research.

Dr. Guy has published over 60 manuscripts in tobacco control and tobacco regulatory science research. She is the principal investigator of the project entitled, Eliminating Systemic Racism in Commercial Tobacco Control Research funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Grant no. 79456, PI: Guy) where she leads a transdisciplinary team to interrogate the role of research in reproducing systemic racism and tobacco-related health inequities and to develop and disseminate an antiracist road map focused on eliminating tobacco-related inequities among Black populations.

Dr. Guy is also an MPI, co-project director of the Investigator Development Core (IDC), director of social justice integration and an MPI of Project 4: Black Health Block Quit and Screen Project in the Center for Research, Health, and Social Justice (1P50MD017319-01, MPIs: Cornell, Fagan, Guy), an NIH/NIMHD-funded Center for Reducing Disparities in Multiple Chronic Diseases that employs multilevel interventions to reduce cancer and cardiovascular disease among Black and rural populations. 

Dr. Guy is a member of the Massey Cancer Center Cancer Prevention and Control Group and the Center for the Study of Tobacco Products at VCU. She holds several national advisory positions including as a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health. She is founding co-chair and a current member of the Racial and Equity Task Force in the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and an advisory board member for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Building Capacity to Reduce Tobacco Inequities in the South and Midwest Initiative and a Mid-Atlantic Regional Lead for the Intercultural Cancer Council.