Dr. Brooks' primary areas of research involve (1) smoking cessation and tobacco-related disease and (2) health disparities.  Major current projects include:

1. Principal Investigator of a five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute to conduct a group-randomized trial in Boston public housing developments to test whether use of specialized resident community health advocates can increase use of smoking cessation treatments and subsequent quit rates among smokers living in public housing.

2. Co-investigator in a study funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to assess patterns of RNA gene expression associated with different smoking patterns and changes in gene expression for a six-month period following cessation of smoking.

3. Co-investigator (formerly Research Core Director) in the Partners in Public Housing - Prevention Research Center, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which focuses on research and other activities designed to improve the health of public housing residents. He currently leads a project to use easily available public health data to characterize the health of public housing residents in Boston.

4. Principal Investigator of a project funded by the World Bank to search for causes of a long-term epidemic of chronic kidney disease in Nicaragua.

Prior to joining the faculty at BUSPH, Dr. Brooks spent more than 10 years at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, most recently as Director of the Health Survey Program, where he directed all aspects of the Massachusetts Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS).