Alisa Padon, PhD, MBE

Alisa A. Padon, PhD, is the research director for the Prevention Policy Group (PPG) at PHI. She has a broad background in behavioral science research methods, and her research focus has centered on commercial determinants of health outcomes, health policy development, and evaluation.

Her work at PHI has examined the impacts of cannabis policy implementation on public health to develop actionable policy recommendations. Dr. Padon has led the development and annual collection of several cannabis-related regulatory and retail datasets, including 1) The California Local Cannabis Laws Database (CLCLD), which contains information from each of California’s 539 city and county jurisdictions as to the status of legalization of commercial cannabis activities, with 158 variables covering retail practices, equity provisions, product and advertising restrictions, and smokefree air policies, among others. 2) The Dispensaries Database contains information on California’s state-licensed adult-use and medical cannabis retail dispensaries and deliverers downloaded from the California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) License Search site. The database includes the license type, license number, premise address, license issue and expiration date, whether adult-use and/or medical cannabis is permitted for sale, and the license status. That data is merged with information gathered from Weedmaps.com, adding retailer hours of operation, discounts, and products sold. These datasets have been paired with outcomes data such as youth cannabis use, prenatal cannabis use, point-of-sale data, etc., to test the effects of specific regulatory and retail characteristics on health.

Dr. Padon also has specific expertise in youth-appealing marketing and promotions of cannabis, alcohol, and tobacco products. She developed the Content Appealing to Youth (CAY) index, a marketing measurement tool that examines the psychosocial and neurocognitive appeals and techniques used in marketing through the lens of youth’s vulnerabilities due to their unique developmental stage.

Dr. Padon holds a doctorate in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed a master’s in bioethics and postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania. She also spent several years as a senior Institutional Review Board (IRB) administrator at the University of Pennsylvania and has been a member of the PHI IRB since 2017.