Biographies: Scientific Advisory Board on Vaping Products

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• Steven J. Hoffman, J.D., Ph.D., LL.D (Chair)
• Carolyn Baglole, Ph.D., MSc
• Judith G. Bartlett C.M., MD, MSc, CCFP
• Nicholas Chadi, MD MPH FRCPC FAAP
• Joanna Cohen, Ph.D., MHSc
• Mark Eisenberg, MD, MPH, FACC, FAHA, FCAHS
• Maciej L. Goniewicz, Ph.D., PharmD
• Réka Gustafson, MD, MSc, MHSc, FRCPC
• David Hammond, Ph.D., M.Sc.
• Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, MA, DPhil
• Milan Khara, MBChB, CCFP, Dip. ABAM
• Michael Pesko, Ph.D
• Nancy Rigotti, MD

Chair

Steven J. Hoffman, J.D., Ph.D., LL.D.

Dr. Steven J. Hoffman is the Dahdaleh Distinguished Chair in Global Governance & Legal Epidemiology and a Professor of Global Health, Law, and Political Science at York University, the Director of the Global Strategy Lab, the Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Governance of Antimicrobial Resistance, and the Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Population & Public Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He holds a courtesy appointment as a Professor of Health Research Methods, Evidence & Impact (Part-Time) at McMaster University. He is an international lawyer licensed in both Ontario and New York who specializes in global health law, global governance and institutional design. His research leverages various methodological approaches to craft global strategies that better address transnational health threats and social inequalities. Past studies have focused on access to medicines, antimicrobial resistance, health misinformation, pandemics and tobacco control.

Steven previously worked as a Project Manager for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and as a Fellow in the Executive Office of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York City, where he offered strategic and technical input on a range of global health issues. He also previously worked for a Toronto law firm specializing in cross-border intellectual property litigation, health product regulation, and government relations. Steven advised the World Health Organization on development of a global strategy for health systems research and was lead author on the background paper that provided the strategy's conceptual underpinnings. For three years he convened an academic advisory committee on science reporting for Canada's only national weekly current affairs magazine. He was previously an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa (2014-2017), Adjunct Professor of Global Health & Population at Harvard University (2015-2020) and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford (2018-2019).

Board members

Carolyn Baglole, Ph.D., MSc

Dr. Carolyn Baglole is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pathology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics and Experimental Medicine at McGill University. She is also Director of the Histopathology Technology Platform at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, Director of the McGill Research Centre for Cannabis and Co-Director of the Experimental Pathology Unit (EPU; McGill). Dr. Baglole received her BSc (1993) and MSc (1998) from the University of Prince Edward Island, and her PhD from the University of Calgary (2003). She then did postdoctoral training in the fields of lung biology/inhalation toxicology in the Department of Environment Medicine at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY (2010).

Dr. Baglole's research program focuses on the pathogenesis of chronic lung diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). These lung diseases are associated with exposure to inhaled toxicants, particularly cigarette smoke which is still a leading cause of death around the world. Dr. Baglole's translational research program also centres on understanding the lung effects of inhaling cannabis products as well as the use of e-cigarettes. Her main research focus is to understand at the cellular and molecular levels, how these environmental exposures contribute to pathogenic mechanisms such as chronic inflammation that drive the development of diseases such as COPD. Dr. Baglole's research program is funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Quebec Respiratory Health Network (QRHN). Dr. Baglole is also currently a Fonds de recherche du Québec Senior Research Scholar.

Judith G. Bartlett, C.M., MD, MSc, CCFP

Dr. Bartlett is a retired Métis physician and population health researcher with 30+ years' experience in Indigenous health. Her professional roles included Director of First Nations Health Programs, Manitoba Region, Health Canada; Co-Director of the Manitoba First Nations-Centre for Aboriginal Health Research; Staff Physician (Chemical Withdrawal Unit, Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre); Associate Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba; founding Director, Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF)-Health & Wellness Department; and Adjunct Scientist, Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP).

While at the MMF she initiated a partnership with the MCHP to co-produce a province-wide Métis Health Status Report. Creation and implementation of six Métis Region/Regional Health Authority ‘Knowledge Network' tables ensured that Report outcomes contributed to adapting provincial health program to better meet Métis needs. Her department also completed age and sex specific studies on diabetes, cancer, mental health disorders and cardiovascular disease in Manitoba Métis. Dr. Bartlett has led or participated in research projects with Indigenous populations across Western Canada, in Central & South America, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and United States. Her latest research was an external independent review of the Saskatoon Health Region obstetrics and maternal care related to media reporting that Aboriginal women were coerced into being sterilized after childbirth.

Dr. Bartlett's research leadership roles include membership on the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Aboriginal Peoples' Health (IAPH) Institute Advisory Board (IAB) and on the TriCouncil Panel on Research Ethics. She is a founding member of the International Network on Indigenous Health Knowledge and Development (INIHKD). Her volunteer leadership includes: founding female co-chair of Aboriginal Health & Wellness Centre of Winnipeg (including part-time clinical until 2012); founding co-chair of the Native Physicians Association in Canada; chair of the National Aboriginal Health Organization Board, and chair of the United Way of Winnipeg.

Nicholas Chadi, MD, MPH, FRCPC, FAAP

Nicholas Chadi, MD, MPH, FRCPC, FAAP, is a paediatrician specialized in Adolescent and Addiction medicine. He is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Paediatrics as well as a Fonds de Recherche du Québec (santé) Clinical Research Scholar at the University of Montreal. 

Dr. Chadi obtained his medical degree at McGill University and completed a fellowship in Adolescent Medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children as well as a fellowship in global journalism at the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto. He also completed a Master of Public Health at Harvard University and was the first paediatrician in North America to complete a Paediatric Addiction Medicine Fellowship as Boston Children's Hospital's inaugural Fellow. 

Dr. Chadi is the director of the substance use program as well as an attending physician with the eating disorder program at Sainte-Justine University Hospital Centre. He is also a co-founder and co-director of the interdisciplinary gender diversity clinic at Sainte-Justine University Hospital Centre. 

Dr. Chadi's research focuses primarily on the prevention and treatment of adolescent mental health and substance use disorders, specifically nicotine and marijuana use disorder. He is currently the lead investigator for a national surveillance study looking at vaping-related injuries among youth in Canada. A strong advocate for children and youth mental health and wellbeing, Dr. Chadi has given more than one hundred radio and television interviews and is the lead author on several position statements on tobacco and nicotine for the Canadian Paediatric Society and the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. 

Joanna Cohen, Ph.D., MHSc

Joanna Cohen is the Bloomberg Professor of Disease Prevention and the Director of the Institute for 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 25 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 US and Canadian legislators regarding tobacco and tobacco control policy, a longitudinal cohort of smokers focusing on factors influencing quitting behavior, tobacco promotion at the point of sale, tobacco prices including taxes, tobacco packaging, options for reducing the physical availability of tobacco products, and tobacco industry interference in tobacco control. Dr. Cohen is Deputy Editor of the journal Tobacco Control and was recently a voting member of the US Food and Drug Administration's Tobacco Product Scientific Advisory Committee.

Mark Eisenberg, MD, MPH, FACC, FAHA, FCAHS

Dr. Eisenberg is a tenured Professor of Medicine and Director of the MD-PhD Program at McGill University, as well as a Staff Cardiologist at the Jewish General Hospital. In addition to his clinical responsibilities, Dr. Eisenberg is an Associate Member of the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health at McGill, Director of the Cardiovascular Health Services Research Group and Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at the Jewish General Hospital, and a Principal Investigator at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology of the Lady Davis Institute. Dr. Eisenberg completed his MD at the University of Rochester, a residency in Internal Medicine at McGill University, and a Masters of Public Health at Harvard University. He completed a research fellowship in Echocardiography and Epidemiology, as well as a cardiology fellowship, at the University of California in San Francisco, followed by an interventional fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. In 2010, he received a Masters of Management in International Health Leadership from McGill University.

Dr. Eisenberg has published over 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals. His research interests include primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease, health services and outcomes research, smoking cessation, the metabolic syndrome, clinical trials, and meta-analyses. He is also interested in related, broader prevention and public health issues, such as youth e-cigarette use. Dr. Eisenberg recently led the E3 Trial evaluating the use of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation in the general population and is currently leading the ASAP Trial evaluating the use of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation in cardiac patients. He has received continuous funding from peer-reviewed sources as a principal investigator since 1995 and was appointed a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2013.

Maciej L. Goniewicz, Ph.D., PharmD

Dr. Maciej L. Goniewicz is a Professor of Oncology at the Department of Health Behavior, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, NY. He earned a Pharm.D. degree (2002) and a Ph.D. in Toxicology and Pharmacology (2007) from the Medical University of Silesia, Poland. He completed his postdoctoral fellowships in Clinical Pharmacology and Tobacco Control at the University of California San Francisco and in Smoking Cessation Treatment in Queen Mary University of London, UK. Dr. Goniewicz's primary research area is in toxicity of tobacco products and nicotine pharmacology, with a focus on nicotine dependence and smoking cessation. He has research experience in smoking cessation behavioral treatment, pharmacotherapy, and pharmacokinetics in both clinical and community-based settings. Dr. Goniewicz's current research is focused on new nicotine-containing products and alternative forms of tobacco. He examines safety and efficacy of electronic nicotine delivery devices, commonly called e-cigarettes. These studies include the laboratory evaluation of the products, pharmacological and toxicological assessment, surveys among their users, and their potential application in harm reduction and smoking cessation.

Réka Gustafson, MD, MSc, MHSc, FRCPC

Dr. Réka Gustafson is the PHSA Vice President, Public Health and Wellness and Deputy Provincial Health Officer and provides leadership to the BCCDC. In addition, she is a Clinical Associate Professor at the UBC School of Population and Public Health. Dr. Gustafson leads the integration of population and public health promotion, planning and prevention across PHSA's clinical programs. As Deputy Provincial Health Officer, she is responsible for the delegated functions, duties and activities carried out under the Public Health Act.

Dr. Gustafson completed her Master of Science, Master of Health Science and MD degrees at UBC. She holds a fellowship in Public Health and Preventative Medicine and certification in Family Medicine. Before her current position, she practiced public health as a Medical Health Officer in Vancouver Coastal Health for over fifteen years.

David Hammond, Ph.D., M.Sc.

David Hammond is a Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses upon tobacco control and vaping in the areas of health communications, packaging, and product regulation, as well as cannabis and nutrition policies. Professor Hammond works closely with governments around the world and has served as an Advisor for the World Health Organization. Professor Hammond also serves as an Expert Witness in court cases, primarily on behalf of governments defending health regulations from legal challenges by the food and tobacco industries. Professor Hammond's research has been recognized by awards from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Medical Association, the Royal Statistical Society of Canada, and the World Health Organization.

Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, MA, DPhil

Jamie Hartmann-Boyce is an Associate Professor of Evidence-Based Policy and Practice and editor of the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, UK. Her research mainly consists of evidence synthesis work, with a focus on health behaviours and tobacco control. She leads the Cochrane review of electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation as well as the Cochrane review of electronic cigarettes and their association with smoking in young people, both of which are funded by Cancer Research UK. Her work informs tobacco control policy and practice in the UK and beyond. She holds a BA in Community Health and English Literature from Tufts University, USA, a MA in the History of Medicine from Oxford Brookes University, UK, and a DPhil in Primary Care Health Sciences from the University of Oxford, UK.

Milan Khara MBChB, CCFP, Dip. ABAM

Dr. Milan Khara, a UK trained physician, joined Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) in 2003 having previously worked as an Addiction Medicine Consultant at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. Certified in 2006 by the American Society of Addiction Medicine, his current work primarily focuses on treating tobacco use disorder but also extends into other areas of tobacco control.

Clinical commitments include leading the Vancouver General Hospital Smoking Cessation Clinic where individuals with tobacco use disorder are offered evidence-based treatment. He also acts as an adviser to the Office of The Chief Medical Health Officer at VCH in matters relating to tobacco and vaping cessation and prevention. Dr. Khara has been involved in training health care professionals and students throughout Canada to optimally treat tobacco use disorder, speaking at many medical gatherings and also as part of the CAMH TEACH project. More recently, he has led initiatives to combat the growing problem of electronic cigarettes in high schools, speaking with educators, students and parents in a variety of settings. He has also worked in an advisory capacity with the government of Nunavut to assist in their tobacco control initiatives. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine.

Research efforts have mainly focused on “hard to treat” populations and have been published in scientific medical journals. Dr. Khara has also been actively involved in many areas of tobacco control advocacy including providing expert testimony in a number of legal challenges to smoke-free legislation. These include the 2014 challenge by the Vancouver “hookah houses” and, most recently, cases relating to multi-unit dwellings. He also appeared as an expert witness before the Standing Committee on Health in order to contribute to the development of a federal regulatory framework for electronic cigarettes.

Michael Pesko, Ph.D

Michael Pesko is a health economist that uses natural experiments to identify causal effects of tobacco control policies. Recently, Dr. Pesko's research uses e-cigarette policy changes, such as from e-cigarette taxes, to study benefits and drawbacks of allowing the sale of e-cigarettes as consumer products (research summary here: https://bit.ly/2XrIQzb). His research has been supported by externally generated funds exceeding $2.8 million since 2016, including from the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society. He is also a co-organizer of the Tobacco Online Policy Seminar (www.tobaccopolicy.org), a free multidisciplinary, international forum for research with tobacco policy implications using experimental or quasi-experimental study designs. Dr. Pesko is an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Economics at Georgia State University and is a fellow in the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. He has published 50+ peer-reviewed papers including in top health economics and health policy journals.

Nancy Rigotti, MD

Dr. Rigotti is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and founding director of Massachusetts General Hospital's Tobacco Research and Treatment Center. Trained as a general internist, Dr. Rigotti has served as President of the Society of General Internal Medicine and the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco. At MGH, Dr Rigotti is Associate Chief for Academic Advancement in the Division of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Rigotti is internationally known for her leadership in research to reduce the health burden of tobacco use by developing and testing tobacco cessation treatments and promoting their adoption in a wide range of health care settings nationally and internationally. Over time her group's work has broadened to encompass strategies to improve health equity for vulnerable populations with a high prevalence of tobacco use, such as people who are homeless, live with HIV, or have comorbid psychiatric and substance use disorders. A second area of her research has been the evaluation of tobacco control policies and impact of alternative tobacco products. Dr. Rigotti was a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine panel that produced the landmark 2018 report, Public Health Consequences of E-Cigarettes and scientific co-editor of the 25th anniversary U.S. Surgeon General's Report. The author of over 350 publications, Dr. Rigotti is a Master of the American College of Physicians, member of the American Association of Physicians, and recipient of numerous awards, including the Society of General Internal Medicine's John Eisenberg National Award for Career Achievement in Research. She is a graduate of Stanford University, Harvard Medical School, the Massachusetts General Hospital internal medicine residency and Harvard Medical School's general internal medicine research fellowship.