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. 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.

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 almost 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.

Her current projects include describing the extent of tobacco marketing at retail stores and developing an online course on tobacco control for public health professionals. She is a Senior Editor of Tobacco Control and holds a Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator Award for her line of research, Identifying Barriers to Effective Tobacco Control.

He has held several senior positions over the years at the Ontario Ministry of Health, Cancer Care Ontario, Health Canada, 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. From 2004-2005, he was Director of the Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Branch, where he was involved in the renewal of the OTS. Most recently, he has been Senior Consultant, Knowledge Exchange at Cancer Care Ontario. His training in evaluation and his lengthy involvement in comprehensive tobacco control programs at the highest level in a variety of settings equip him well for his role at OTRU.

He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto.  He 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.

He has conducted numerous evaluation studies and audits of various programs, is on the Editorial Board of three journals, is a Visiting Associate and External Fellow at York University, has taught several courses in evaluation, budgeting and performance measurement and analysis, and has published three books and many scientific papers.  He has a particular interest in the quality of evaluation.

Dr. Bondy received her MSc in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Western Ontario and PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Toronto. 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 area 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.

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”.

Dr. McDonald works closely with partners from the public (e.g., Health Canada, provincial ministries of health, regional health authorities and public health departments) and non-profit (e.g., the Canadian Cancer Society, the Heart and Stroke Foundation) sectors to identify and evaluate methods for reducing the health and economic burden associated with tobacco use.

His current projects include: (i) the development of a national strategy to help current smokers; (ii) the development and evaluation of a new tool to triage smokers into different types of cessation treatments; (iii) methods for improving smokers use of effective aids to quit smoking; (iv) improving the effectiveness and cost efficiency of telephone-based counselling for smoking cessation; (v) the impact of various public policies (tobacco taxes, no-smoking restrictions, warning labels for tobacco packages, reimbursement for pharmacotherapy, etc.) on the behaviour of current smokers (vi) the development of smoking cessation and prevention resources for youth and (vii) and the identification of "better" (or informed) practices for tobacco control.

Dr. McDonald's research is funded by the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the National Cancer Institute of Canada, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Health Canada and others. He is also a co-author of self help books and websites for smoking cessation (e.g., On the Road to Quitting; Quit 4 Life, One Step at a Time), as well as one of the designers of the Canadian Cancer Society's Smokers' Helpline. Paul holds a PhD in Health Studies from the University of Waterloo and a masters degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Waterloo.

Dr. Selby received his Bachelor of Medicine from Bombay University, Bombay, India 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.