The Experts

A - M | N - Z

Secondhand Tobacco Smoke in Public Places

Marty Otañez
University of California, San Francisco
Marty Otañez is an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Researcher in the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco.  His dissertation in cultural anthropology (UC Irvine, 2004) analyzed the connections between tobacco farm workers and harmful business practices of U.S. tobacco companies in Malawi.  He published several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on Malawi and global tobacco companies, including “Global Leaf Companies Control the Tobacco Market in Malawi,” Tobacco Control in 2007 (co-authored with Stanton Glantz and Hadii Mamudu).
He produced the documentary film Thangata (2002) on child labor and tobacco mono-cropping in Malawi, and Up in Smoke (2003) on tobacco companies’ control over Malawi’s tobacco sector, concluding that the wealth promised from growing tobacco for tobacco companies is an illusion.  He operates the blog www.sidewalkradio.net.

Tobacco Farming

John Rafferty
The City of Edinburgh Council, United Kingdom
John Rafferty is currently employed by the City of Edinburgh Council as a Smoking Health Enforcement Officer. Mr Rafferty is responsible for enforcing the Smokefree legislation, which was passed by the Scottish Executive in 2005, within the city of Edinburgh. He has been involved in frontline enforcement for more than 30 years, dealing directly with businesses and the public. When the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act 2005 came into force in March 2006, Mr Rafferty played an integral role in developing the enforcement policy for Edinburgh. This included co-writing and delivering presentations to most of the businesses affected by the smoking ban. When other parts of the United Kingdom introduced similar legislation following Scotland’s lead, Edinburgh’s enforcement policy was widely recognised as a good working model for other local authorities to adopt. In fact, Mr Rafferty has shared his expertise with more than 50 local authorities - including 12 London Boroughs, Belfast, and Sheffield. Since the introduction of the smoking ban, compliance levels in Edinburgh have remained extremely high – at 99%, this outstrips the Scottish average of 97.6% .

Smoking, Health, and Social Care in Scotland

K. Srinath Reddy, MD
Public Health Foundation of India
Dr. Reddy is President of the Public Health Foundation of India and until recently headed the Department of Cardiology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences. He has served on many WHO expert panels, and has edited the National Medical Journal of India for ten years. Dr. Reddy has won several prestigious awards including the WHO Director-General’s Award for Global Leadership in Tobacco Control in 2003.

Implementing the FCTC in Developing Countries

Bungon Ritthiphakdee
Southeast Asian Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA)
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Thailand
Ms. Ritthiphakdee is the director of the Southeast Asian Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA), the first and only regional tobacco control network encompassing countries belong to the ASEAN. She has built a local, national, and international reputation for her ability to build relationships with others and bring together seemingly disparate groups of people to make tobacco control a prominent place on the national agendas of Thailand and other South East Asian countries. From 1987 to 2000, she worked as director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Thailand. In 1987 she helped make tobacco control a national agenda in Thailand by coordinating a nationwide signature campaign that led to several policy change. By the 1990s, she had mobilized civil society that help secured parliamentary tobacco control laws. She is one of the winners of the Luther L. Terry Awards in 2006 for outstanding individual leadership in tobacco control.

Tax and Health Promotion

Hana Ross, PhD
American Cancer Society and ITEN
Dr. Hana Ross received both her BA and MA from the Prague School of Economics. She went on to earn her PhD in Health Economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2000. She currently serves as the deputy director of the International Tobacco Evidence Network and as a senior research specialist at the Health Research and Policy Centers, School of Public Health, University of Illinois, Chicago. She has also worked as a consultant to the World Bank, during which time she provided economic analysis for the Global Youth Tobacco Survey. Her areas of interest include substance abuse behaviors with a special interest in smoking and international tobacco control. She has published many papers in the field of global tobacco control and youth smoking behavior.

The Costs of Smoking

Gary Saffitz
Center for Communication Programs,
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Gary Saffitz is a Deputy Director at the Center for Communication Programs (CCP) and Senior Associate Faculty at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Currently, he provides technical oversight to CCP programs in Africa, Asia, Near East, Latin America, and Eastern Europe/Eurasia, and leads the Center’s program in tobacco control.  Over his past 22 year association with CCP, he has played a major role in developing national strategies and implementing a wide range of innovative behavior change programs in collaboration with Governments, NGOs and the private sector in over 20 different countries.  Prior to joining CCP, he was Director of the Communication Group and International Programs for Prospect Associates, President of Saffitz, Alpert & Associates, and Vice President/Account Group Head at Porter Novelli, where in 1979, he first began working in US based tobacco control programs with the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, National Heart, Lung, & Blood Institute, and Centers for Disease Control.

Introduction to Strategic Communication | Introduction to the Strategic Communication Planning Process

Jonathan Samet, MD, MS
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Samet chairs the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control. His research has addressed the effects of inhaled pollutants in the general environment and in the workplace. Dr. Samet 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 School of Medicine where he was professor and chief of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division. He has written widely on the health effects of active and passive smoking and served as consultant editor and senior scientific editor for Reports of the Surgeon General on Smoking and Health. He is the recipient of the 2004 Prince Mahidol Award for public health and the Surgeon General's medal in 1999 and 2006.

The Tobacco Epidemic  |  Health Effects of Active Smoking  |  Health Effects of Passive Smoking

Frances Stillman, EdD
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Frances Stillman received a EdM from Temple University in 1970 and an EdD from Johns Hopkins University in 1986. She currently serves as both an associate and research professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and as the co-director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control. She is primarily interested in the design, implementation and evaluation of tobacco control policies. Dr. Stillman was instrumental in the establishment of smoke-free policies at Johns Hopkins Institutions and has designed and implemented several other programs to facilitate cessation of tobacco product consumption. Dr. Stillman is involved in many projects to advance the tobacco control agenda and to reduce the prevalence of tobacco consumption worldwide. Her work on tobacco control policy and program evaluation has been published extensively.

Introduction to Evaluation Programs  |  Evaluation of Tobacco Control Programs: ASSIST

Stephen Tamplin, MS
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Mr. Tamplin is an Associate Scientist in the Department of Epidemiology of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  He is working with the School’s Institute for Global Tobacco Control and currently focuses on tobacco control projects in China, India and Vietnam. Mr. Tamplin’s professional career has included long-term employment with the World Health Organization (18 years in the Western Pacific Region where he served as a Technical Adviser on Air Pollution Control to the Republic of Korea from 1984 to 1987; Regional Adviser in Environmental Health from 1988-2002; and, the Regional Focal Point for Tobacco Control from 1998-2002), the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (12 years working in air pollution control) and the West Virginia Air Pollution Control Commission (4 years).  He has broad-based public health and environment experience in the United States and in Asia and the Pacific covering a range of technical disciplines, including tobacco control, air and water pollution control, chemical safety and hazardous waste management, and health promotion.

Tobacco and Poverty

Gemma Vestal, JD, MPH, MBA, BSN
Tobacco Free Initiative, World Health Organization
Gemma Vestal, Legal Officer and Scientist for the Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI) at the World Health Organization (WHO) received her Juris Doctor from the University of  Maryland School of Law. Ms. Vestal also has an MPH from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, an MBA from the University of Baltimore, and a BS in Nursing from Sonoma State University. Among her other roles, her work in TFI focuses on providing global policy leadership in the area of tobacco product regulation by encouraging mobilization at all levels to promote the implementation of the product regulation provisions of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. She is also the TFI liaison person for the day to day technical support to the Convention Secretariat of the WHO FCTC.

WHO FCTC: Text, Commitments, and Timelines

Hugh Waters, PhD
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Hugh Waters received an MS from Georgetown University in 1987 and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1999. He currently serves as an associate professor in the International Health Department of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is the co-director of the MPH Concentration in Comparative Health Systems. His research interests focus on health care financing, coverage and access. Dr. Waters’ current work includes expansion of health care access and funding in low-income countries such as Ecuador and Afghanistan, analysis of health care reform options, and preparation of case studies for insurance coverage extension in low- and middle-income countries, among other endeavors. In the field of tobacco control, Dr. Waters is the principal investigator of a study for the American Cancer Society to calculate the cost of secondhand smoke in Maryland.  Dr. Waters has contributed many papers to the field of health economics.

Tobacco Control and Economics: Principles and Overview

Anna White
Essential Action
Anna White is the Coordinator of Essential Action’s Global Partnerships for Tobacco Control, a project that approaches global tobacco control by partnering groups in developed countries such as the United States with counterparts in developing countries such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Conducting extensive research on the nature of the tobacco industry’s marketing strategies in Senegal as a Fulbright Scholar, Ms. White has provided comprehensive information on tobacco industry advertising strategies in the third world. Ms. White promotes international anti-smoking advocacy campaigns and monitors tobacco industry activities worldwide.

Tobacco Advertising Bans

Heather Wipfli, PhD, MA
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Wipfli currently serves as a Research Associate in the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and as project director at the Institute for Global Tobacco Control. Generally, she is interested in governance and policy implementation intended to improve health globally. Dr. Wipfli has applied this broad interest to global tobacco control, with special emphasis on training and policy improvements in developing countries to curb the tobacco epidemic. As a technical officer, she has worked closely with the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative on the design of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. She has published in the field of policy development for health improvement and the FCTC. Dr.  Wipfli currently works closely with several research projects covering tobacco control policy.

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

Ayda Yurekli, PhD
Research for International Tobacco Control
Dr. Yurekli is a senior economist for the World Health Organization's Tobacco Free Initiative and a program leader with the Research for International Tobacco Control (RITC) program at the International Development Research Center in Canada. She has been influential in the dissemination of information concerning the global economic impact of tobacco control policy implementation and is considered an expert in tobacco economics. Dr. Yurekli has published extensively in the field of tobacco control economics.

Illicit Trade in Tobacco

Mitch Zeller, JD
Pinney Associates
Mitch Zeller is vice president for policy and strategic communications at Pinney Associates, a health consulting firm in Maryland. From 2000 to 2002, Mr. Zeller was executive vice president of the American Legacy Foundation, a public health foundation in Washington, D.C. created by the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with the tobacco industry. His responsibilities included marketing, communications and strategic partnerships. In January 2002,  Mr. Zeller created the foundation's first Office of Policy and Government Relations. From 1993 to 2000, Mr. Zeller served as associate commissioner and director of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Office of Tobacco Programs where he built the first nationwide program to reduce youth access to tobacco. He served as the FDA's representative on tobacco issues in all dealings with Congress, as well as with federal and state agencies, public health groups and foreign governments. Mr. Zeller also served as an official U.S. delegate to the World Health Organization (WHO) Working Group for the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Tobacco Products