Researcher to discuss impacts of science-based tobacco-control policies during Perry Lecture

As the world confronts the continuing pandemic of deaths caused by tobacco use, a research program led by noted scholar Geoffrey T. Fong offers scientific evidence for policies that fight the epidemic worldwide.

Founder and chief principal investigator of the program, Fong will discuss its impact during the 30th J. Warren Perry Distinguished Lectureship, sponsored by UB’s School of Public Health and Health Professions. Fong’s talk is titled “The use of scientific evidence in the fight against the global tobacco epidemic: Examples from the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project.”

The event takes place at 10:30 a.m. Oct. 25 in 147 Diefendorf Hall, South Campus.

The International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC) is the first-ever international cohort study of tobacco use. It is conducted by more than 150 researchers in 29 countries covering half the world’s population and two-thirds of its tobacco users. According to Fong, ITC’s objective is to combine “psychological theories and research methods with traditional epidemiological survey methods to evaluate the impact of tobacco-control policies on entire populations of countries.”

The stakes around Fong’s effort could hardly be higher: “Tobacco use is the No. 1 preventable cause of death throughout the world and is projected to kill one billion people in the 21st century,” he explains.

ITC’s population cohort surveys, experimental studies and tobacco product and biomarker studies across countries have contributed to creating and implementing effective tobacco-control policies worldwide. These policies emerged from the world’s first health treaty, the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and include efforts such as warning labels, plain packaging, smoke-free laws and taxation. Fong will describe how ITC has strengthened and sped up the realization of the policies by providing research-based evidence of their success.

During his talk, Fong also will highlight the implications of the success of “evidence-to-policy” efforts in tobacco control for other major threats to global health.

Fong is professor of psychology and public health and health systems at the University of Waterloo, and senior investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. He has published some 320 journal articles and contributed to major reports from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, United States Institute of Medicine, U.S. National Academy of Sciences and U.S. Surgeon General.

He was one of three scientific editors of “The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control,” the 2017 monograph of the U.S. National Cancer Institute and WHO that was the first comprehensive review of research on the economics of tobacco and tobacco control in nearly 20 years. He has served as an expert consultant to many countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, the United Kingdom, Uruguay and Singapore on a diversity of issues relating to tobacco use and tobacco policy, including additives, health warnings, plain packaging and smoke-free laws.

The J. Warren Perry Award and Distinguished Lectureship honors the late J. Warren Perry, founding dean of what was then UB’s School of Health Related Professions. Perry, a pioneer in the field of allied health, served as dean from 1966 until his retirement in 1977. Initiated in 1989 by the school’s former dean, Alan Stull, the lectureship introduces students, faculty and staff to some of the best leaders and scholars in a variety of fields.