Breaking the Illusion: Building the Scientific Case for Plain and Standardized Packaging for All Tobacco Products

Joanna Cohen (she/her) is Chair of the Department of Health, Behavior & Society, 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 conducts research and capacity building to inform and advance interventions to eliminate tobacco-caused death and disease. 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 30 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 U.S. 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 has been recognized for her teaching and mentoring, and has co-led a 6-year training program in public health policy. She was a Senior Editor of the journal Tobacco Control for 20 years, and has been a voting member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Tobacco Product Scientific Advisory Committee.