Faculty

Ron Borland

Ron Borland PhD is the Nigel Gray Distinguished Fellow in Cancer Prevention, The Cancer Council Victoria; a Professorial Fellow in the School of Population Health and Department of Information Systems, The University of Melbourne; and an honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. He joined the then Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria as a Behavioral Scientist in 1986, and has been here ever since in various roles including Deputy Director of the CBRC, and inaugural Director of the VicHealth Center for Tobacco Control, before he took up his current position in 2004. Professor Borland is one of the Principal Investigators of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project. His work is designed to understand the impact on smokers of tobacco control policies, help design better systems for regulating tobacco, understanding what is needed for optimum community-wide tobacco control, and identify barriers to stronger governmental tobacco control initiatives. He also has an active interest in developing and improving mass disseminable cessation aids, and the potential of automated personalized computer technologies and the internet for advancing cancer control. He has presented at major international conferences on visions for the future of tobacco control.

Naowarut Charoenca

Dr. Naowarut Charoenca is currently working at the Faculty of Public Health, Mahidol University as an Associate Professor.  She has been actively involved with tobacco control activities in Thailand for about 15 years.  Dr. Charoenca’s main research interest is second-hand smoke exposure in all age groups and policy relevant to protection of such exposure. Her previous studies include: Passive smoke exposure in restaurants and nightclubs in Bangkok; Measurement of nicotine and carbon-monoxide in restaurants and nightclubs in Bangkok; Prevalence of smoking among Buddhist monks in Thailand; Community coalition of health workers against smoking; Lower respiratory illnesses and second-hand smoke exposure in Thai children under five; Point of purchase store surveillance in Bangkok; Exposure to tobacco smoke among women and children in the home; Tobacco smoke pollution in workplaces in Thailand: results from the Global Air Monitoring Survey of PM 2.5; and System development to inform policy makers regarding levels of PM 2.5 in youth venues.  Some of her on-going research projects are: Web site development to disclose tobacco industry documents; Compliance with public smoking restrictions in government services buildings in Thailand; and Second-hand smoke exposure among bar workers and patrons by urine cotinine analysis.

Gregory N. Connolly

Gregory N. Connolly, D.M.D., M.P.H. is an instructor in the Department of Society, Human Development and Health and a member of the Division of Public Health Practice at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is also a Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Professor awarded to Harvard School of Public Health by the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute (FAMRI). His research focuses on the prevention and control of tobacco and tobacco related disease. He conducts research on tobacco product design, reduced risk tobacco products, global tobacco issues, efficacy of tobacco control interventions and the structure and marketing practices of the tobacco industry. Dr. Connolly is the principle investigator on three research projects:
Analyzing internal tobacco industry documents made available through the Master Settlement Agreement between the major tobacco manufacturers and the states’ attorneys general. The project objectives are to assess how tobacco manufacturers design their products and how product design promotes use among different groups.

Monitoring the design and marketing of emerging "harm-reduction" tobacco products, also known as Potentially Reduced Exposure Products (PREPs), and new conventional tobacco products.

Investigating the economic effect of state clean indoor air laws on the hospitality and tourism industry including restaurant and bar business employment.

Geoffrey T. Fong

Geoffrey Fong, PhD is currently leading a major international study designed to understand and evaluate national-level tobacco control policies being introduced in over 100 countries over the next few years. Fong is the Chief Principal Investigator of this project--the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (also known as the ITC Project)--which involves over 40 researchers from 9 countries: Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, and China. Through surveys conducted on smoking populations internationally, the ITC Project is evaluating the effectiveness of stop-smoking strategies such as warning labels, advertising and promotion bans, higher taxes, and protections against second hand smoke.

David Hammond

Dr. Hammond's research examines the effectiveness of population-level health interventions. Much of my work is focuses upon developing evidence-based guidelines for the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control—the world’s first international public health treaty. As a consequence, my research has an international scope and involves collaborations with experts from a range of disciplines in over 10 different countries, including those in low and middle income countries. Ultimately, I hope to conduct research that not only evaluates the impact of existing initiatives, but provides the evidence and impetus for more effective health policy.

Howard K. Koh

Dr. Howard K. Koh is the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health, Associate Dean for Public Health Practice, and Director of the Division of Public Health Practice at the Harvard School of Public Health. He also serves as Director of the Harvard School of Public Health Center for Public Health Preparedness. Dr. Koh received his M.D. from Yale University and M.P.H. from Boston University School of Public Health. From 1997 through 2003, Dr. Koh served as Commissioner of Public Health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, appointed by Governor William Weld. An accomplished physician, advocate, scholar, and healer, Dr. Koh has been recognized for his interdisciplinary leadership in public health. He has published more than 200 articles in the medical literature and is nationally known in the areas of cancer prevention, tobacco control, Asian-American health issues, and skin oncology (melanoma and cutaneous lymphoma). In addition, he has served as Principal Investigator on numerous medical research grants funded by the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Dr. Koh has received the Drs. Jack E. White/LaSalle D. Leffall, Jr., Cancer Prevention Award from the American Association for Cancer Research and the Intercultural Cancer Council, as well as the national Distinguished Service Award from the American Cancer Society. In 2000, President Bill Clinton appointed Dr. Koh to a term on the National Cancer Advisory Board.

Richard J. O'Connor

Dr. Richard J. O'Connor is Assistant Member of the Department of Health Behavior, Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences in 2007. He earned a bachelor's degree in Psychology (1999) from the George Washington University (Washington, D.C.) and a doctorate (2004) in Biobehavioral Health at the Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA).
Dr. O'Connor has authored over 40 scientific papers on topics related to tobacco control He is the Director of Tobacco Research Laboratory and co-investigator on the Roswell Park NCI-supported transdisciplinary tobacco use research center (TTURC) which is investigating the impact of national level tobacco control policies across different countries. The tobacco laboratory serves to characterize popular products sold on the international market in terms of physical and design features, so as to provide greater insight into user-product interactions that may affect addiction and/or health outcomes.
Dr. O'Connor also coordinates the International Tobacco Product Repository, which is creating cohort surveillance of popular tobacco products in a number of countries. His research spans mechanisms of tobacco addiction including patterns of tobacco use, development of unobtrusive and minimally invasive measures of tobacco exposure in humans, and ways to communicate with consumers about tobacco products.

Maizurah Omar

Maizurah Omar, Ph.D is the Principal Investigator of the Malaysian Arm of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Research (ITC) Southeast Asia Project, funded by the National Cancer Institute, NIH, as part of the Roswell Park TTURC. She is a faculty member of the Research Network for Tobacco Control, a key member of the Clearinghouse for Tobacco Control-SEA, both funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, and a member of the Malaysian Council for Tobacco Control. She is a Fellow for Southeast Asia for Tobacco Control (SEATCA), a resource person for research in labeling and packaging for the ASEAN region and a member of the International Visual Literacy Organization. Her publications mainly focus on research and production of warning labels and visual images not only in tobacco control but also in other areas namely toxicology and pharmacy. She has created both ICT and Multimedia Educational Packages and e-learning Packages for the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Use and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health in Malaysia.

Maizurah Omar
Clearinghouse for Tobacco Control, National Poison Centre, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Minden, Penang, Malaysia

Tel: 604-6570099
Fax:604- 6568417
Mobile: 0196556357

Jonathan M. Samet

Jonathan M. Samet, M.D., M.S., is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Epidemiology of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Dr. Samet received a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard College, an M.D. degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, and a Master of Science degree in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health.  He is trained as a clinician in the specialty of internal medicine and in the subspecialty of pulmonary diseases.  From 1978 through 1994, he was a member of the Department of Medicine at the University of New Mexico.  At the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, he is Director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control -- which is a WHO Collaborating Center and one of the major partners in the $125 million Bloomberg Global Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use -- and Co-Director of the Risk Sciences and Public Policy Institute.  His research has addressed the effects of inhaled pollutants in the general environment and in the workplace.  He has written widely on the health effects of active and passive smoking and served as Consulting Editor and Senior Editor for Reports of the Surgeon General on Smoking and Health and the National Cancer Institute’s Monographs on Tobacco Control.  He testified against the tobacco industry in litigation brought by the State of Minnesota and the U.S. Department of Justice.  He has edited books on the epidemiology of lung cancer and on indoor and outdoor air pollution.  He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1997.  He received the Surgeon General’s Medallion in 1990 and 2006 for his work on the Surgeon General’s Reports and the Prince Mahidol Award, from the King of Thailand, in 2005 for his work on air pollution.

Mark Travers

Mark Travers is a Research Affiliate in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Mark has degrees in biomedical engineering and epidemiology and has spent the last several years providing the scientific basis for clean indoor air policies by researching exposure to tobacco smoke pollution and evaluating the effects of smoke-free air policies. He has conducted the largest study of tobacco smoke pollution exposure in the hospitality industry and his research has been featured in debates over smoke-free air legislation in dozens of communities. He has worked to provide sound scientific evidence to support smoke-free air policies and effectively communicate this evidence to researchers in a wide range of fields, national, state and local policy makers, the media, local advocacy groups and the lay public. His current research is in validating the latest methods in air monitoring and integrating them with measurements of biological markers of exposure to tobacco smoke pollution. Mark and colleagues in the Roswell Park Cancer Institute Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (Roswell TTURC) are conducting a global air monitoring effort that is currently in 40 countries around the world measuring exposures to tobacco smoke pollution and informing the debate over smoke-free air policy.

Maansi Bansal Travers

A member of the Roswell Park Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (Roswell TTURC), Maansi Bansal Travers, PhD has focused on the impact of packaging, advertising, and labeling on smokers. Ms. Travers is currently investigating the effects that a variety of corrective statements (mandated by United States Federal Court) may have in the public. She is also investigating how cigarettes packaging and product descriptors like "smooth" may impact consumer beliefs about products.

Charles W. Warren

Charles W. Warren, PhD, is a Distinguished Fellow/Statistician with the Office on Smoking and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, Georgia.  He currently is working on international youth tobacco prevention and control programs.  In particular, he is working on the Global Tobacco Surveillance System, an international tobacco surveillance system in collaboration with the World Health Organization.  This system includes three survey components: the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS), the Global School Personnel Survey (GSPS), and the Global Health Professions Student Survey (GHPSS).