2018: Geoffrey T. Fong, PhD, FRSC, FCAHS

The 30th Annual J. Warren Perry Lecture.

Dr. Fong is Founder and Chief Principal Investigator of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC Project), a research consortium of over 150 researchers across 29 countries covering over half of the world’s population and over two-thirds of the world’s tobacco users. In each country, the ITC Project has conducted large-scale longitudinal cohort surveys to evaluate the impact of tobacco control policies of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

Dr. Fong has published over 320 journal articles and has contributed to major reports from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), US Institute of Medicine, US National Academy of Sciences, and US Surgeon General. He was one of the three scientific editors of the 2017 monograph of the US National Cancer Institute and WHO, The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control, 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. He was an expert for the Australian government in their successful defense of plain packaging at the World Trade Organization, and he was an expert for Uruguay in the successful defense of their policies challenged by Philip Morris International via a bilateral investment treaty. Dr. Fong was a member of the 7-person independent expert group formed by the FCTC Conference of the Parties to conduct the official impact assessment of the treaty over its first decade; the Expert Group’s report was presented at the FCTC Conference of the Parties in Delhi in November 2016.

Dr. Fong is the recipient of the 2009 “Top Canadian Achievement in Health Research Award” from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and Canadian Medical Association Journal, the 2011 CIHR Knowledge Translation Award, a 2013 WHO World No Tobacco Day Award, a 2015 Luther R. Terry Award for Outstanding Research Contribution, a global award in tobacco control given every three years, the 2017 American Association for Public Opinion Research’s Policy Impact Award, the 2018 Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Disease; he will be receiving the 2019 John Slade Award from the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.