McAuley Oration 2022

The global tobacco pandemic: Causes, consequences and control

Date: Tuesday 15 November 2022
Time: 5:30pm–7:00pm
Location: Te Wao Nui (Otago Business School)
Cost: Free public lecture
Registrations: Registrations have closed.

Biography

Professor Chris Bullen

Professor Chris Bullen is a public health physician and Professor of Public Health at the School of Population Health, The University of Auckland, where he is Director of the National Institute for Health Innovation and Deputy Head, School of Population Health. He specialises in tobacco control and smoking cessation research, particularly on pragmatic trials of innovative approaches with the potential to scale up in low and middle-income countries. Recent research projects have trialled smoking cessation support delivered on social media platforms in China and by community health workers in rural South India and explored how to integrate smoking cessation into HIV and TB programmes in Myanmar. Chris is a visiting academic at the University of Malaya, where he has maintained productive research and teaching collaborations for over a decade. He loves tramping, good music and Asian cuisine of any kind.

Abstract

While it may seem the sun is setting on tobacco smoking in New Zealand, in reality, stark differences in smoking and smoking harms persist across axes of wealth and ethnicity. Moreover, our local tobacco inequities are amplified globally in the experience of low and middle-income countries, where the number of smokers is rising, even while smoking prevalence is static or falling. Without concerted efforts to tackle the tobacco pandemic, prospects for achieving global health equity and sustainable development are grim. In this talk, I will describe the determinants of the tobacco pandemic. Next, I will outline the magnitude of its global impacts, current and projected. Finally, I will proffer ideas for how, through multidisciplinary, international partnerships and drawing on lessons learned from global responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, we might turn the tide on the pandemic of tobacco-related death, disease and inequity.