UB professor to serve on FDA’s tobacco advisory committee

BUFFALO, N.Y.  – A leading tobacco researcher at the University at Buffalo has been appointed to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC).

Gary Giovino, professor and chair of the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior in the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions, will serve as one of nine qualified voting members on the committee, which advises the FDA in its regulation of tobacco products.

“I am very honored to be joining such an esteemed group of professionals and researchers working to help the FDA make important scientific decisions,” Giovino said. “My experience in the field lends itself well to this role, and I am looking forward to the process.”

As a member of the advisory committee, Giovino will help evaluate safety, dependence and health issues relating to tobacco products and will provide advice, information and recommendations to the commissioner of food and drugs. The committee can also provide recommendations on other matters related to the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

A resident of East Aurora, Giovino has extensive experience in tobacco research. He started his career at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in the 1970s and early 1980s working in the smoking cessation clinic. There, he also studied physician training for smoking cessation, tobacco withdrawal, relapse after quitting and tobacco advertising.

He coordinated an evaluation of one of the nation’s first smoking cessation telephone quit lines while at the University of Rochester as a research associate in the mid-1980s.

In 1989, he joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Office on Smoking and Health, first as an epidemiologist and later serving as chief of the Epidemiology Branch. There he published extensively on the epidemiology of tobacco use and dependence, contributing to multiple reports of the Surgeon General. When he returned to Roswell Park in 1999, he conducted research on several topics, including state tobacco control programs and policies, tobacco products, and youth smoking cessation. He also served on the Institute of Medicine Committee that produced the report, “Clearing the Smoke: Assessing the Science Base for Tobacco Harm Reduction.”

Since joining UB in 2006, Giovino has expanded his work to include studies of childhood maltreatment, tobacco use and dependence, and possible influences of dietary patterns on tobacco dependence and cessation.