Dr. Kathuria is a pulmonary, critical care, and sleep physician, an implementation scientist, and an expert on tobacco dependence. Her clinical and research efforts are in reducing health disparities by developing, implementing, and studying the outcomes of innovative programs that focus on teachable moments to promote health behavior change in tobacco use, the leading cause of preventable disease. She is a PI or Co-I on several pilot projects using various platforms to improve access to guideline recommended treatment. She is also a PI of a randomized controlled trial funded by the American Lung Association (Lung Cancer Discovery Award) using an inpatient nurse-driven intervention to promote smoking cessation and lung cancer screening.

Dr. Kathuria has developed and directs the Tobacco Treatment Center at Boston Medical Center, a program that brings together a multidisciplinary team of health professionals who specialize in helping smokers quit cigarettes. The team provides tobacco dependence consultation on >1500 hospitalized smokers each year. For this work, she received the inaugural Evans Clinical Innovator Award relating to efforts to treat tobacco dependence in low SES populations. She recently received funding from the Evans Center for Implementation and Improvement Sciences to assess outcomes related to implementation of the program.

Dr. Kathuria has chaired a national project sponsored by the American Thoracic Society (ATS) to prioritize research needs to optimize smoking cessation in the context of lung cancer screening and is an invited member of the American Cancer Society Tobacco Cessation Task Group (National Lung Cancer Round Table) tasked to improve implementation of tobacco treatment in lung cancer screening programs. She is on an ATS panel that is developing an updated clinical tobacco treatment guideline, and in 2019 will be chairing a committee through the American College of Chest Physicians to develop a national clinical guideline on implementing inpatient tobacco treatment services. Dr. Kathuria been appointed by the ATS president to serve on the Tobacco Action Committee to help organize educational, advocacy and policy activities relating to tobacco use.