SPEAKERS 2020 (2021 COMING SOON)

Dr. Ahluwalia is a physician and public health scientist at Brown University’s Schools of Public Health and Medicine. He has been in academic medicine since 1992 and has been a practicing physician, faculty member, department chair, Associate Dean and Center Director in medical schools, and School of Public Health Dean. His primary research areas are health disparities and smoking cessation and nicotine addiction in African-American smokers. He has been continuously funded by NIH for 25 years and has published more than 350 manuscripts. Ahluwalia has served on the U.S. government’s National Advisory Council on Minority Health and Health Disparities, on the SRNT Board of Directors, and is currently appointed to the federal government’s Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health chaired by the US Surgeon General. Dr. Ahluwalia trained at NYU, received a MD and MPH at Tulane University, a Medicine residency at UNC Chapel Hill, and a clinical epidemiology fellowship at Harvard Medical School, where he received a masters degree in health policy.

Robert Beaglehole is an independent public health physician with a longstanding interest in the prevention and management of chronic diseases. He was professor of public health at the University of Auckland before taking up a position at WHO, Geneva where he became the Director of the Department of Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion before returning to New Zealand. In 1982 he established ASH (NZ) and now Chairs the ASH Board.

Nicky has worked in stop smoking in a variety of guises since 2006, first as an HCA in a GP practice, followed by a locum advisor for pharmacy in Ealing, then into Public Health as part of a specialist team in Harrow.  She is now the Service Lead and Specialist for the London Borough of Barnet. Her role consists of performance management of commissioned service providers in the borough (GP and Pharmacy), clinical lead for the borough (including training) and running  face to face (in normal times) and telephone support clinics (1:1) for the following:

• complex/high risk co-morbid
• pregnancy cohort
• and other highly dependent tobacco users (including those living with poor mental health).

Cliff Douglas is the Director of the University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network, an adjunct professor at the School of Public Health, and a co-principal investigator for the Center for the Assessment of Tobacco Regulations at the University of Michigan. He was the American Cancer Society’s Vice President for Tobacco Control from 2015 to 2020, where he led the development of a comprehensive new public health approach to tobacco control, set forth in the American Cancer Society Public Health Statement on Ending Combustible Tobacco Use in the United States (2018), and co-founded the National Partnership on Behavioral Health and Tobacco Use, which is dedicated to increasing cessation and reducing mortality and illness in smokers with mental health conditions. He also provided expertise on issues related to the changing tobacco product marketplace and guided ACS’s efforts to educate the public about the impact of smoking on COVID-19. Previously, he served as a policy advisor for the Assistant Secretary for Health and the U.S. Surgeon General in the Obama administration, where he was a lead author of the Tobacco Control Strategic Action Plan for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Earlier in his career, he coordinated the successful national campaign to make all commercial airline flights smoke-free and participated as an attorney and public health expert in the litigation that resulted in adoption of the Master Settlement Agreement. As special counsel for Congressman Martin Meehan and the Congressional Task Force on Tobacco and Health in the U.S. House of Representatives, he wrote legislation and prepared the 111-page prosecution memorandum that persuaded the U.S. Attorney General to launch a criminal investigation into the tobacco industry and later file the Justice Department’s landmark racketeering (RICO) action against the major tobacco companies. As told in Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry, Mr. Douglas also helped tobacco industry whistleblowers go public, and initiated an ABC News expose on the tobacco companies’ engineering of their products to cause dependency that led the Food and Drug Administration to open a two-year investigation and regulate tobacco for health and safety for the first time.

Professor Jacob George is Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine & Therapeutics and R&D Director for the East of Scotland NRS Node. He is Director of the Tayside Medical Sciences Centre (TASC - https://www.ahspartnership.org.uk/tasc ). Professionally, he is a Consultant Physician in qualified in Clinical Pharmacology and General Internal Medicine and is an accredited European Hypertension Specialist. His clinical interest is in managing patients with high Cardiovascular risk. His research interests are focused on reducing cardiovascular risk factors. His research publications have been covered by more than 500 news organizations worldwide and he has conducted more than 80 media interviews including live television broadcasts to national and international media on the results of his research.  

Dr. Glynn is, from 2014 to the present, Adjunct Lecturer, Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine and Executive Team Member, Mayo Clinic Global Bridges Initiative. From 1998 to 2014, he was Director, Cancer Science and Trends and Director, International Cancer Control at the American Cancer Society (ACS). Prior to the ACS, Dr. Glynn was, from 1991 to 1994, Associate Director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Cancer Control Science Program and, from 1991 to 1998, Chief of the NCI's Cancer Control Extramural Research Branch. From 1983 to 1991, he was Research Director for the NCI's Smoking, Tobacco, and Cancer Program and from 1978 to 1983, he was a Research Psychologist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Glynn has published widely on cancer and tobacco use prevention and control, both in the scientific literature and for consumer, professional, and patient education. In addition to his work at the ACS and NCI, he has served as a consultant on cancer control and tobacco issues to such groups as the National Academy of Sciences/Institute of Medicine, the National Research Council, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the WHO, a variety of pharmaceutical organizations, and national, state and local governments. He has also served as a Senior Scientific Reviewer for the U.S. Surgeon General's Reports on Tobacco and Health, as Director of the World Health Organization Study of Health, Economic, and Policy Implications of Tobacco Growth and Consumption in Developing Countries, and has been active in tobacco control programs in Eastern Europe, Central America, and India. He is a Fellow of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and his awards include the U.S. National Institutes of Health Merit Award, the Polish Ministry of Health Service Award, the Guatemala National Council for Tobacco Prevention and Control Meritorious Service Award, the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco John Slade Award, and the American Society of Preventive Oncology Joseph W. Cullen Memorial Award.

Wayne Hall is an Emeritus Professor at the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research at the University of Queensland and the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences. He was: a Professor at the National Addiction Centre, Kings College London (2014-2019) and a Visiting Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2012-2021). He has advised the World Health Organization on the health effects of cannabis use; the effectiveness of drug substitution treatment; the contribution of illicit drug use to the global burden of disease; and the ethical implications of genetic and neuroscience research on addiction.

Dorothy K. Hatsukami, Ph.D. is the Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Forster Family Chair in Cancer Prevention and Associate Director of Cancer Prevention and Control of the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota.   Her areas of expertise include nicotine addiction and its treatment and tobacco regulatory science assessing the toxicity, appeal and addictiveness of various tobacco products.  She has over 450 peer reviewed publications and has received a number of awards for her work.  She has served on numerous scientific advisory boards or councils for the U.S. government including the FDA Tobacco Product Scientific Advisory Committee s.  She is currently a member of the World Health Organization Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation.  She served as president of two scientific organizations, the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.

Richard Holley is the Area Manager for the Northamptonshire Stop Smoking Service, and Tobacco Control lead for Public Health Northamptonshire. In February of this year, Richard and his team added e-cigarettes to the list of products they provide to Northamptonshire smokers looking to quit smoking. A keen harm reduction advocate, Richard has included vaping in several different pieces of work so far this year, including an innovative workplace vaping project which aims to encourage routine and manual workers to switch to e-cigarettes.

Dr. Robin Mermelstein, a Distinguished Professor, College of Liberal Arts and Science, Department of Psychology, directs the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She also is a research professor of community health sciences in the UIC School of Public Health, and the co-director of the UIC Center for Clinical and Translational Science. Her research interests fall broadly in the area of tobacco use, with studies ranging from longitudinal examinations of the etiology of youth smoking to cessation interventions for adult smokers. Since the mid 1990s, Dr. Mermelstein has been the principal investigator of a series of studies, including two consecutive program projects funded by the National Cancer Institute, to investigate trajectories of smoking patterns among adolescents and young adults, with a focus on social and emotional contextual factors. In addition, she has been funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to examine factors related to youth smoking, and by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Cancer Institute for studies of adult smoking reduction and cessation. Other areas of research focus include health behaviors of young adults and motivational interventions to increase smoking cessation. Dr. Mermelstein is the past-president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and serves on national research review committees of the National Institutes of Health. She served on the Institute of Medicine committee that wrote the 2015 consensus study report, Public Health Implications of Raising the Minimum Age of Legal Access to Tobacco Products. She directed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's national program office of Partners with Tobacco Use Research Centers: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Advancing Science and Policy Studies. As part of this program, RWJF collaborated with both NCI and the National Institute on Drug Abuse in funding the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers. In 2014, the University of Illinois at Chicago named Dr. Mermelstein Woman of the Year for her contributions to women's health and professional development.

Stefanie Miller is a Managing Director of FiscalNote Markets in Washington, D.C., where she leads the tobacco, cannabis, politics and fiscal policy practice areas. Stefanie has worked at the intersection of Wall Street and Washington since 2007, and her tobacco coverage focuses on the regulatory risks posed by federal, state and municipal policies on both incumbents and new entrants into the industry. Stefanie received her MBA from Georgetown University and her BA in economics and political science from the University of Nebraska. She appears frequently as a commentator on CNBC and Bloomberg TV and is quoted regularly in financial press.

Louise Ross has worked in stop smoking settings since 2004. Having launched the first vape-friendly Stop Smoking Service in 2014, she has continued to advocate for tobacco harm reduction, wearing a number of different hats. She is a freelance clinical consultant at the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training, Vice Chair and mental health lead at the New Nicotine Alliance, and Business Development Manager at the Smoke Free app.  

Steven Schroeder, MD, is Distinguished Professor of Health and Healthcare at the University of California San Francisco, where he directs the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center (SCLC). A graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School, he trained in internal medicine at Harvard and in epidemiology at the CDC. He held faculty positions at Harvard and George Washington University. Between 1990 and 2002 he was President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where he initiated programs in tobacco control that resulted in $500 million in grant expenditures during his tenure. The SCLC, which he founded in 2003, works with professional societies, federal and state organizations, and advocacy groups to both increase the number of smokers who attempt to quit and increase the probability of a successful quit. It has partnered with over 80 organizations, launched the “Ask, Advise, Refer (to a quitline)” alternative for busy clinicians, developed the blue card for 1 – 800-QUIT NOW (over 5 million now in circulation), broadened the range of clinicians involved in smoking cessation, and helped to focus more attention on the lethal combination of smoking and behavioral health conditions. A member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly IOM), he chaired the American Legacy Foundation Board of Directors (now Truth Initiative), and served on the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine for 19 years.

The Science Media Centre a UK charity set up in 2002 to help scientists communicate the evidence on controversial issues to the public through the national news media.  Tom has degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics, and he joined the SMC in April 2008.  In that time he has worked on a number of high profile stories including mobile phones and cancer, GM crops, fracking and climate change; in every case it was vitally important that the voices of the very best scientists were heard among the uproar.  Although independent, the SMC is unashamedly pro-science and has no ‘brand’ to promote.  This gives them the freedom to concentrate on what is important: keeping sound, evidence-based science at the top of the news agenda.

Kenneth E. Warner is the Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Public Health and Dean Emeritus at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where he was on the faculty from 1972-2017. He served as Dean from 2005-2010 and as a department chair from 1982-88 and 1992-95. An economist, Dr. Warner earned his A.B. degree from Dartmouth College and M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University. Presented in over 300 professional publications, including 7 books, Dr. Warner’s research has focused on tobacco and health policy. Dr. Warner served as the World Bank’s representative to negotiations on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. He also served as the Senior Scientific Editor of the 25th anniversary Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health. During 2004-05 he was President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. He was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Truth Initiative. Currently, he is a member of the FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee and an elected member of the Board of Trustees of Northwestern Michigan College. Dr. Warner’s honors and awards include: the Surgeon General’s Medallion, conferred by Dr. C. Everett Koop in 1989; election to membership in the National Academy of Medicine in 1996; a Luther L. Terry Award for Exemplary Leadership in Tobacco Control in 2003; the Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Disease in 2010; and the triennial Doll-Wynder Award from the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco in 2017.