Geoffrey T. Fong, OC, PhD, FRSC, FCAHS, is Professor of Psychology and Public Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo. He is also a Senior Investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. Dr. Fong received his A.B. in psychology from Stanford University and his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan and has held faculty positions at Northwestern University and Princeton University.

Dr. Fong is Founder and Chief Principal Investigator of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (the ITC Project), a transdisciplinary collaboration of 150 researchers across 31 countries, covering all 6 WHO Regions: Americas: Canada, United States, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay; Euro: United Kingdom (before Brexit), France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain; Eastern Mediterranean: United Arab Emirates; Africa: Kenya, Mauritius, Zambia; Southeast Asia: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Thailand; and Pacific: Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, New Zealand, Vietnam.

The overall objective of the ITC Project is to conduct rigorous evaluation of the psychosocial and behavioral effects of tobacco control policies of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the first-ever WHO treaty. In each country, the ITC Project conducts large-scale longitudinal cohort surveys of adult smokers (about 2,000 in each country), with survey waves being conducted every 1-2 years. The ITC Project is the only international cohort study of tobacco use in the world. The ITC surveys include key mediators of policy impact in each of the FCTC policy domains (e.g., warning labels, smoke-free laws, taxation/price, advertising and promotion). The overall design takes advantage of the many natural experiments that are taking place as countries implement tobacco control policies. We are answering questions about whether certain implementations of an FCTC policy are more effective than others (e.g., do graphic images on warning labels have greater impact than text-only warning labels?) and whether this impact varies across the many ITC countries that differ on culture, economic development, and history of tobacco control (e.g., do the graphic images in Thailand have greater impact than the graphic images in Australia?). The ITC Conceptual Model underlying the ITC Surveys is inherently based on social and health psychology theories and conceptual frameworks.

In recent years, the ITC Project has added an important research focus on understanding the use and transitions of use of e-cigarettes and other non-cigarette nicotine products, with particular emphasis on understanding the interactions between these products and cigarettes to assess, across the multiple countries of the ITC Project, their public health impact. Since the impact of these products may well differ in different population groups, the ITC Project also has added a parallel youth/young adult survey in several countries, allowing for impact to be assessed among both adults who smoke and youth who do and do not smoke. The ITC Project has the only international adult and youth research project to assess the impact of these products.

Dr. Fong’s earlier work involved collaborations with Hazel Markus on the impact of self on the perception of others; with Dick Nisbett, David Krantz, Ziva Kunda, Darrin Lehman, and others on the impact of statistical training on reasoning; with Tara MacDonald and Mark Zanna on the effects of alcohol intoxication on risky health behaviours (e.g., risky sex); and with John Jemmott on the creation, implementation, and evaluation (using randomized controlled trials) of behavioural interventions to reduce HIV/STD risk among inner-city adolescents.

Among the awards that Dr. Fong has received is the Distinguished Teaching Award of the University of Waterloo in 1999. Dr. Fong has received a number of national and international awards, including the 2009 Top Canadian Achievement in Health Research from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canadian Medical Association Journal; the 2011 CIHR Knowledge Translation Award; the 2013 WHO World No Tobacco Day Award for his international work advancing the FCTC; the 2015 global Luther L. Terry Award for Outstanding Research Contribution from the American Cancer Society; the 2017 Policy Impact Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR); the 2019 Medal of Honour from the Health Research Foundation (Dr. Fong is the 27th recipient of this award, which was first presented in 1945 to Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin); the 2019 John Slade Award from the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco for outstanding contributions to public health and tobacco control through science-based public policy, the 2020 O. Harold Warwick Prize for outstanding achievements in cancer control research from the Canadian Cancer Society, and the 2021 Governor General’s Innovation Award, an award that “encompasses all sectors of Canadian society” and is given to “individuals, teams and/or organizations whose innovations are truly exceptional, transformative, and positive in their impact on quality of life in Canada.” Dr. Fong is a fellow of many scientific societies including the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and the Association for Psychological Science. In December 2021, Dr. Fong was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada. In September 2023, Dr. Fong was designated as a University Professor by the University of Waterloo “in recognition of exceptional scholarly achievement and international pre-eminence.”