Faculty

Institute Faculty | Affiliated Faculty

Jonathan Samet, MD, MS

Professor
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Dr. Samet is trained as a clinician in the specialty of internal medicine and in the subspecialty of pulmonary diseases. From 1978 through 1994, he was a member of the Department of Medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine where most recently he was professor and chief of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division in the Department of Medicine. At Johns Hopkins, he chairs the Department of Epidemiology and is director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control. His research has addressed the effects of inhaled pollutants in the general environment and in the workplace. He has written widely on the health effects of active and passive smoking and served as consultant editor and senior editor for Reports of the Surgeon General on Smoking and Health. He is the recipient of the 2004 Prince Mahidol Award for public health and the Surgeon General's medal in 1999 and 2006.

Frances Stillman, EdD, EdM

Associate Professor
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Dr. Stillman is a clinical psychologist with over 18 years experience in tobacco control. She has published over 40 articles in more than 20 different journals. Her primary research focus has been on designing, implementing, and evaluating tobacco control and smoking cessation programs. She directed the implementation and evaluation of the project to create a Smoke-Free Johns Hopkins Hospital, which has served as a model for other hospitals across the U.S. Dr. Stillman has extensive experience working in tobacco control at the local, state, national and international levels. Before joining Johns Hopkins, Dr. Stillman directed the evaluation of the largest federally funded tobacco control effort, entitled "The American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (ASSIST)." She was responsible for developing the conceptual framework that guided this large-scale effort. Dr. Stillman has also been involved with community participatory research and mobilization projects and has conducted and evaluated clinical trials of smoking cessation efforts.

Heather Wipfli, PhD, MA

Assistant Scientist
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Dr. Wipfli has been involved in global tobacco control for six years. Before joining the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, she was a technical officer on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control team in the Tobacco Free Initiative at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Heather is a political scientist by training and has published extensively on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) process, in addition to peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on network development, capacity building in developing countries, global health governance, trade liberalization and health, and health security.

Erika Avila-Tang, PhD, MHS

Assistant Scientist
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Dr. Avila-Tang is a project coordinator at the Institute for Global Tobacco Control. Dr. Avila-Tang’s experience includes the development, management, review of articles, data abstraction, and quality control of literature databases in support of the 2004 Surgeon General’s Report on active smoking, the 2006 Surgeon General’s Report on involuntary smoking, and the 2003 Tobacco*Free Japan report. Dr. Tang also authored a key comprehensive review chapter on the epidemiology of asthma and allergic disease for Allergy Principles and Practice, a prestigious medical textbook. She is currently working in research projects on tobacco control to produce evidence for policy development and capacity building.

Stephen Tamplin, MSE

Associate Scientist
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

For the past four years, Mr. Tamplin has been a private consultant on environment, health and development issues whose clients have included the JHSPH Institute for Global Tobacco Control, the World Health Organization, the U.K. Department for International Development, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the University of Western Sydney, Australia.  His professional career has included long-term assignments with the World Health Organization (18 years in the Western Pacific Region where he served as the Regional Focal Point for Tobacco Control from 1998-2002), the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (12 years) and the West Virginia Air Pollution Control Commission 4 years).  He has broad-based public health and environment experience in the United States and in Asia and the Pacific covering a range of technical disciplines, including tobacco control, air and water pollution control, chemical safety and hazardous waste management, and health promotion.

Benjamin Apelberg, PhD, MHS

Assistant Scientist
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Dr. Apelberg is a Research Associate in the Department of Epidemiology and the Institute for Global Tobacco Control.  He is an environmental epidemiologist with research experience in the investigation of the health impacts of environmental pollutants, including tobacco.  Dr. Apelberg has also conducted several analyses on the projected population health benefits associated with increasing rates of smoking cessation, both in the U.S. and Japan.  He is currently working on the development of an individualized risk prediction tool for estimating smokers’ risk for developing disease.