Sonia Duffy is a professor and Mildred E. Newton Endowed Chair at the College of Nursing. She also is a research scientist at the Department of Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System. Duffy was educated in health behavior and epidemiology and her research has focused on cancer reduction strategies related to health behavior change, particularly smoking cessation.
Duffy has conducted a longitudinal study of head and neck cancer patients and looked at the relationship between health behaviors and biomarkers and recurrence and survival. She has also conducted several randomized controlled trial across numerous populations testing Tobacco Tactics, a smoking cessation program she developed.
One of her trials showed that quit rates among hospital patients more than doubled when nurses were trained to coach patients on how to stop smoking and to make sure patients have a plan before leaving the hospital.
In 2017, Duffy was inducted into the Nurse Research Hall of Fame. Created in 2010, this award recognizes nurse researchers who have achieved significant national or international recognition and have improve the lives of the people they serve.