Ms. Hanna Ollila, M.Soc.Sci
National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL)
Hanna Ollila leads the WHO FCTC Secretariat’s Knowledge Hub on Surveillance, based at the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Finland. She is Master of Social Sciences and currently conducting her PhD studies at the University Helsinki. Her training is in the field of social psychology. She has been working at THL with smoking prevention and tobacco control for over a decade.
Ms. Ollila has been involved in conducting numerous national and cross-national surveys such as the national FINRISK Survey, the national School Health Promotion Survey and the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD). She has also been the coordinator of the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) Finland. She has co-authored the WHO FCTC Global Progress Reports 2016 and 2018.
She has also participated in an EU Twinning Light project supporting the harmonization of the tobacco legislation with the EU Tobacco Produts Directive, and strengthening the tobacco surveillance system, in the Republic of Serbia.
Her research focuses on the impact of tobacco-free school legislation, and on the patterns of tobacco and nicotine use among youth. She is member of the scientific committee of the Tobacco-Free Finland 2030 Network.
Dr. Jeffrey Drope, Ph.D.
American Cancer Society
Dr. Jeff Drope is Scientific Vice President of Economic and Health Policy Research at the American Cancer Society and Professor in Residence of Global Public Health at Marquette University. At ACS, an official observer to the WHO FCTC, Dr. Drope leads a team of professional researchers who focus on the nexus of public health and economic policymaking, especially taxation, trade, and investment.
His work seeks to integrate the two different policy areas in proactive ways that engender both improved public health outcomes and economic prosperity. Focus areas include tobacco farming, tobacco taxation, and economic costs of tobacco.
In addition to extensively publishing in these substantive areas, including as co-author of the most recent Tobacco Atlas, he participates actively in capacity-building efforts across the globe, working with major inter-governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, national governments and many educational institutions.
Currently, Dr. Drope is spearheading a multi-country initiative on the economics of tobacco farming in low- and middle-income countries. He has also authored dozens of chapters and research articles on the political economy of non-communicable disease in major journals.
Dr. Corinne M. Graffunder, DrPH, MPH
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Dr. Corinne Graffunder is Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Office on Smoking and Health within the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.
Dr. Graffunder joined the CDC in 1987 and has 30+ years of experience working with Global, National, State and local prevention efforts. She is responsible for providing broad leadership and direction for all scientific, policy, communication and programmatic issues related to tobacco prevention and control.
Dr. Graffunder’s expertise is in policy development, program management, strategic planning, and public and partner communication. She has subject matter expertise in prevention strategies, population health and health system transformation, focusing on a wide range of fields including tobacco use prevention and control, the prevention of violence and the prevention of non-communicable diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease and cancer. Her expertise is the application of evidence and research to practice and programs.
Prior to joining the Office on Smoking and Health, she held the position of Deputy Associate Director for Policy in CDC’s Office of the Director. In this position she worked with the U.S. Surgeon General, leading the development of the first ever National Prevention Strategy: America’s Plan for Better Health and Wellness. She also worked to strengthen collaboration between public health, health care, and other sectors playing a key role in advancing CDC’s population health priorities.
She received her doctorate from the University of North Carolina, Department of Health Policy and Management.
Ms. Jane Henley, MSPH
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Jane Henley is an epidemiologist in the Cancer Surveillance Branch in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Ms. Henley joined the CDC in 2010 and uses data from CDC’s National Program of Cancer Registries and other surveillance systems to monitor cancer outcomes.
Before coming to CDC, she worked as an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society in the analytic epidemiology program and conducted analyses using data from the Cancer Prevention Study cohorts.
Her research interests include surveillance of cancers linked to modifiable risk factors, including tobacco use, alcohol use, physical activity, and obesity. She has contributed to more than 100 journal articles and book chapters, including publications about cancer surveillance; lung cancer and other tobacco-related cancers; health consequences of cigarette, cigar, pipe, and smokeless tobacco use; and health benefits of smoking cessation.
She has lectured on lung cancer and smoking at the Morehouse School of Medicine and the use of population-based cancer registry data in cancer prevention and control among LMIC at Emory University.
Ms. Henley earned an undergraduate degree in statistics from Mount Holyoke College and a master of science in public health in biostatistics from the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University.
Prof. Geoffrey T. Fong, Ph.D., FRSC, FCAHS
University of Waterloo, the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project
Dr. Geoffrey T. Fong, Ph.D., FRSC, FCAHS is Professor of Psychology and of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo, and Senior Investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.
Dr. Fong is the Founder and Chief Principal Investigator of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation (ITC) Project, a research consortium of over 150 researchers across 29 countries, covering over two-thirds of the world’s tobacco users. The ITC Project is the world’s largest tobacco research program, focusing its efforts on evaluating the effectiveness of tobacco control policies of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
Dr. Fong was one of the three scientific editors of the 2017 WHO/NCI Monograph, The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control. He was a member/technical coordinator of the FCTC Impact Assessment Expert Group (chaired by Prof. Pekka Puska). Dr. Fong has served as an expert for the WHO and for many countries including Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Singapore across a broad range of tobacco policy and regulatory domains, including health warnings, smoke-free laws, additives and flavourings, and plain/standardised packaging. Dr. Fong was an expert for Australia and Uruguay in their successful defenses of tobacco control policies that were challenged via trade treaties.
Among Dr. Fong’s awards are a 2013 WHO World No Tobacco Day Award, a 2015 Luther L. Terry Award for Outstanding Research Contribution, the 2017 Policy Impact Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research, and 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.
Prof. Linda Bauld, Ph.D.
University of Edinburgh
Linda Bauld holds the Bruce and John Usher Chair in Public Health in the Usher Institute, College of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Linda is a behavioural scientist with a PhD in social policy whose research focuses on two main areas: the evaluation of complex interventions to improve health, and how research can inform public health policy.
Since 2014, she has combined her academic role with a secondment to Cancer Research UK where she holds the CRUK/BUPA Chair in Behavioural Research for Cancer Prevention. Linda is a former scientific adviser to the UK government on tobacco control, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and currently chairs or is a member of research funding or policy committees for CRUK, NIHR, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), Public Health England, Health Scotland, Institute for Alcohol Studies, BreastCancer Now, the Scottish Government and Health Canada.
Ms. Mona Johnson, MBA, CAE
The Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco (SRNT)
Mona Johnson is a Certified Association Executive with 27 years of experience managing international professional societies and trade associations in areas ranging from telecommunications to public health. She creates structures, policies and processes for new or evolving organizations, and works to put people, technology and information in place to achieve strategic goals.
Mona currently leads a start-up online education and knowledge management program for the Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco. This involves managing the more than 140 volunteers from 20 countries who are contributing to this project.
Atty. Deborah Sy, Ll.B., Ll.M.
Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC)
Atty. Deborah Sy is a global health lawyer who serves as the Head of Global Public Policy and Strategy at the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), a joint initiative of Thammasat University and Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA), that has been designated as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) Secretariat’s Knowledge Hub for Article 5.3. She authored SEATCA’s Article 5.3 Toolkit and the Handbook on Policies and Practices on Implementing Article 5.3 as well as conceptualized the Tobacco Industry Interference Index, a country ranking on the capacity to resist tobacco industry influence.
She is a Johns Hopkins University IGTCI Awardee for Excellence in Advocacy (2012) for instituting tobacco industry monitoring activities which won the 2012 Bloomberg Award on Monitoring for HealthJustice while she was executive director. She remains the think tank’s founding trustee and senior advisor, providing guidance on universal health care, health promotion, financing, taxation, regulation, and illicit trade, among others.
She was an adjunct professor at the Harrison Institute of Public Law at Georgetown University where she received her Masters of Law in Global Health and Certificate in WTO Studies, and pioneered research on modern trade agreements in low and middle income countries. She earned her degrees in economics and law at the University of the Philippines.
Prof. Heikki Hiilamo, PhD
University of Helsinki
Dr. Heikki Hiilamo works as a professor of social policy at University of Helsinki. Previously Hiilamo has worked as research professor at Social Insurance Institution on Finland. Hiilamo has the title of Docent from University of Tampere and University of Eastern Finland.
With a PhD in Social Science and a PhD in public Health, prof Hiilamo has researched tobacco industry documents for almost twenty years. His articles have appeared in leading international journals including Addiction, American Journal of Public Health, Tobacco Control and Social Science and Medicine. Hiilamo's most recent research in tobacco control has been focused on global implementation of FCTC demand reduction measures. Hiilamo was a member of a working groups which made official recommendations for Finland to reach 2030 tobacco free goal.