Biography

Deborah Hudson Buckles is the tobacco control lead of the IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Office of Community Outreach and Engagement, where she oversees the office’s tobacco outreach and Rethink Tobacco Indiana and its Tobacco Treatment Specialist course. She received a bachelor of science degree in respiratory therapy, a National Certificate in Tobacco Treatment Practice, is a certified-UMass TTS trainer and serves on national organizations including the Council for Tobacco Treatment Training Programs and the Association for the Treatment of Tobacco Use and Dependence.

Employed at the cancer center since 1997, Buckles dedicated the first 13 years of to helping individuals overcome their tobacco addiction. Since 2008, she has dedicated her career to the “Rethink Tobacco Indiana” project, focused on facilitating health systems change for tobacco treatment in behavioral healthcare settings across Indiana. As a recipient of a grant from the National Cancer Institute’s Moonshot Initiative in 2017, she developed a tobacco treatment program for cancer patients and again began work on health systems change for tobacco treatment in the cancer care setting.

During her more than 25 years in the field of tobacco treatment, she has coordinated and developed training programs for health care professionals and lay people across Indiana, worked on multiple research efforts, provided technical assistance to many different types of healthcare.