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Declaration of Competing Interests for OTRU Principal Investigators (PDF)
Robert Schwartz became Executive Director of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit in July 2011. Previously, he was Deputy Director and Director of Evaluation and Monitoring at OTRU. He is an Associate Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto and holds a faculty association at the university's school of Public Policy and Governance. He is also an External Fellow at York University and an Affiliated Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He is Principal Investigator of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Strategic Training Program in Public Health Policy. He has taught several courses in evaluation, budgeting and performance measurement and analysis and is currently teaching two courses in public health policy.
Dr. Schwartz has extensive training in Public Policy and Administration, Program Evaluation, Public Oversight and State Audit. In recent years, he was a tenured faculty member at the University of Haifa where he was involved as an auditor and evaluator in many international projects, most recently as a Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Consultant for the World Bank. From 1987-97, he worked in the State Comptroller's Office in Israel, serving as their expert in program evaluation. Earlier, he worked at the Brookdale Institute, where he developed a performance monitoring system for the supervision of institutions for the elderly.
At OTRU, Dr. Schwartz has directed a comprehensive evaluation and monitoring program which includes surveillance, monitoring, evaluation, performance measurement and evaluation support and quality assurance. He has completed studies on smoke-free policies, contraband tobacco policy, youth engagement, cessation, total display bans and cigarillo use. Current research projects examine health insurance coverage policies for cessation, smoke-free homes for asthmatic children, and the use of the cigarette package for advertising.
He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, and has published widely. He has a particular interest in the quality of evaluation.
Roberta Ferrence is a Senior Scientist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She is also Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. She was OTRU's first Executive Director, holding the position from 1993 until she stepped down in July 2011. She is currently OTRU's Deputy Director.
Dr. Ferrence received her Masters degree in Medical Sociology and PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Western Ontario. She has been involved in tobacco and alcohol research for many years. Her research interests include the epidemiology of tobacco use, the impact of tobacco policy on health, the role of tobacco in mortality and morbidity, and economic factors in smoking behaviour.
Currently, she is involved in research on smoking attitudes and behaviours in general populations, environmental tobacco smoke exposure in public and private environments, and behavioural and economic effects of restrictions on smoking. She is also involved in new initiatives on third hand smoke. Dr. Ferrence has served on numerous committees and task forces for the National Cancer Institute of Canada, the Canadian Cancer Society, the American Cancer Society, Health Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. She was lead editor on Nicotine and Public Health, published by the American Public Health Association.
Joanna Cohen is the Bloomberg Associate Professor of Disease Prevention and the Director of the Institute of Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She also holds an appointment in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Cohen obtained her PhD in Health Policy and Administration from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill and her MHSc in Community Health and Epidemiology from the University of Toronto. She has been involved in tobacco policy research for over 15 years.
Trained in epidemiology and health policy, her research interests focus on the factors that affect the adoption and implementation of public health policies and on evaluating the beneficial effects and the unintended consequences of such policies. She has worked on studies of both Canadian and US legislators regarding tobacco and tobacco control policy as well as provincial surveys of smoking behaviours, knowledge and attitudes regarding tobacco.
She is a Senior Editor of Tobacco Control.
Susan Bondy is an Associate Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Bondy received her MSc in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Western Ontario and PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Toronto, and is a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology. Her areas of research include: monitoring of alcohol and tobacco use and public opinions on tobacco control policies; psychoactive substance use and associated health problems; and, health services research particularly in the areas of mental health and addiction, as well as cancer detection and treatment. She has experience training graduate students and public health professionals in the analysis and use of survey methods and data in population health. Her research activities related to tobacco include the Ontario Tobacco Survey a cross-sectional survey and panel study of smokers, as well as policy intervention studies and research on impact of pharmaceutical therapies for cessation.
K. Stephen Brown is a biostatistician, Professor and a former Chair of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. He also holds a cross-appointment in the Department of Health Studies and Gerontology at the University of Waterloo. He is Co-Director of the Population Health Research Group and is an affiliated scientist with the Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation, a national research network established by the National Cancer Institute of Canada.
His interests
include design and analysis of cluster-randomized prevention trials, correlated
discrete response data, generalized linear models, statistical consulting,
and statistics education. Dr. Brown has studied the evaluation of smoking
prevention programs since the first randomized trial of the Waterloo Smoking
Prevention Project (WSPPI) began in 1979. He was involved with a seven-year
longitudinal, randomized trial (WSPP3) involving approximately 6000 students
in 100 elementary schools in South Western Ontario that ran from 1990 -
1996. The trial investigated the effectiveness of an elementary school
curriculum-based smoking prevention program, followed by a secondary school
program that used a "community intervention" model. More recently,
he was the principal investigator on a randomized trial (WSPP4) examining
whether a technical assistance package offered to secondary schools will
increase their use of effective tobacco use control interventions and,
subsequently, reduce teen smoking rates.
He was an investigator on the 1993 Canadian
Cancer Society/Health Canada national survey of school-based smoking
programs, and an author of the Technical Reports of the 1994 and 2002
Health Canada Youth Smoking Surveys.
Currently he is a co-principal investigator
on a national study funded by CIHR to investigate the role of individual,
school program and policy, and community characteristics on adolescent
tobacco use. He is also an investigator on the 2006/2007 Health Canada
Youth Smoking Survey, on an NIH funded Transtheoretical Tobacco Use
Research Center: Building the Evidence Base for Tobacco Control Policies,
and on the Canadian Tobacco Control Research Initiative funded “Pan-Canadian Resource Network for Tobacco Control Research, Policy and Practice”.
John Garcia is the MPH Program Leader and Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, Department of Health Studies and Gerontology.
He has held several senior positions over the years at the Ontario Ministry of Health, Cancer Care Ontario, Health Canada, OTRU and at Prospect Associates in the United States as Technical Vice President and Project Director of the American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (ASSIST) Coordinating Center, a multi-state tobacco control program. John Garcia was instrumental in the development of the original Ontario Tobacco Strategy (OTS) at the Ministry of Health in the early 1990s. His training in evaluation, knowledge exchange and his lengthy involvement in comprehensive tobacco control programs equip him well for his role as Principal Investigator at OTRU.John holds a MSc in Health Behaviour and a PhD in Health Promotion from the University of Waterloo.
Paul McDonald is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Health Studies and Gerontology, and Director of the Population Health Research Group at the University of Waterloo.
Paul McDonald is a Professor and Director of the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo. He has been a PI with OTRU since 1998. Prior to joining academia he was a senior manager in the Ontario Public Health System (1989-1996), and a Senior Research Officer with the Health Service Utilization and Research Commission of Saskatchewan (1996-1998).
Dr. McDonald's 20 year research career has been dedicated to the development and evaluation of population interventions to prevent chronic disease and reduce health inequalities, particularly those related to tobacco control policies, programs and communication campaigns. He has worked closely with groups such as Health Canada, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, as well as ministries of Health in Canada, New Zealand, Israel, and other countries to design and evaluate some of Canada most popular smoking cessation booklets, websites, telephone counseling services. He has also developed a simple system to help match smokers to the most appropriate cessation aid. He helped to design and evaluate a variety of other policies, including the graphic warning labels used in Canada and more than a dozen other countries around the world. His other interests include methods and approaches for building capacity for public health training, education as well as research, methods for facilitating research translation and exchange.
Paul holds a Ph.D. in Population Health and a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology
Peter Selby is the Clinical Director of the Addictions Program and Head of the Nicotine Dependence Clinic at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health as well as Associate Professor in the Departments of Family and Community Medicine, Psychiatry and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Selby received his Bachelor of Medicine from Bombay University, Bombay, India and completed his family medicine residency and a Master of Health Sciences in Family Medicine and Community Health, at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Selby practices addiction medicine with a special focus on nicotine dependence. His areas of research include smoking cessation in special populations such as those with co-morbid mental health and addictive disorders, the use of pharmacotherapy, harm reduction, and web-based interventions.
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