First Woman Editor For Tobacco Control Journal

Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Article Date: 22 Jan 2009 - 4:00 PDT

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Professor Ruth Malone has become the first woman, and the first academic nurse, to edit the international journal Tobacco Control, it was announced today.

Tobacco Control, which is published bimonthly by BMJ Group, first launched in 1992 under the editorship of the late Dr Ron Davis, immediate past president of the American Medical Association.

Professor Malone is currently Director of the Health Policy Program and Vice Chair of the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, USA (UCSF).

She also teaches at both the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education and the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the UCSF School of Medicine.

She has published widely in academic journals, and served as reviewer, editorial board member, and contributing editor across a range of titles.

Over the past decade, Professor Malone has been awarded more than US$6 million in external research funding from the National Institutes of Health and other sources for her tobacco control research programme.

She received the American Legacy Foundation's award for work drawing on tobacco industry documents in 2006 and a Fulbright Scholar Award for research in the UK in 2007/8.

She has also had a distinguished career in community and public service, receiving a string of awards and honours, including the USCF Chancellor's Award for Public Service & Edison T Uno Award for Leadership in 2000.

Professor Malone originally trained as an emergency care nurse, and in 2004, she founded the Nightingales, a volunteer nursing education and advocacy group, with a strong focus on public health. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 2004.

Commenting on Professor Malone's appointment, Publishing Director of the BMJ and BMJ Journals at BMJ Group, Peter Ashman, said: "Ruth has been an enthusiastic supporter of the journal for several years and has many exciting plans for its future development. In the past three years, citations have increased by 34% and the impact factor has grown from 2.415 in 2005 to 3.277 in 2007. This reflects how the journal is becoming more and more relevant to the global public health community. We're excited that Ruth will be continuing this excellent legacy."

Professor Malone added: "Increasingly, tobacco is regarded as a problem that requires comprehensive policy approaches, and Tobacco Control has been a leader in publishing the most innovative policy related science and theory in this area. I am delighted to be appointed to the post of editor."

Professor Malone takes over from Professor Simon Chapman of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health and Community Medicine, who edited the journal for 10 years from 1998 to 2008.

Professor Chapman will continue to contribute to Tobacco Control by acting as commissioning editor for new journal content relating to tobacco control, advocacy, and policy in low and middle income countries.

This addition has been made possible by a generous grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, specifically for this purpose.

The move comes at a time when the 2009 World Conference on Tobacco or Health will be held for the first time in a developing country, in recognition of the increasing burden placed on the health infrastructures of low and middle income countries by tobacco related disease.

Tobacco Control

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