Dr. Roy Cameron receives academic honour for research on prevention and health policy

Dr. Roy Cameron, a researcher whose work has influenced governments to take action to prevent smoking, has received the University Professor designation, the University of Waterloo’s highest academic honour.

The designation recognizes exceptional scholarly achievement and international pre-eminence of the university’s most accomplished faculty members. Cameron is one of 13 people at Waterloo who have received the award since its inception four years ago.

 “I am fortunate to work at the University of Waterloo, an outward-looking institution that encourages faculty to conduct socially relevant research,” Cameron said.

Cameron is executive director of the Centre for Behavioural Research Program Evaluation (CBPRE). The program integrates research, evaluation, policy and practice that helps governments continually improve policies and programs related to population health. He is also currently participating in the advisory group for the large population cohort being created in Ontario by the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), Cancer Care Ontario, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer.

“On behalf of OICR, I congratulate Dr. Cameron for this well-deserved honour. Prevention is a key part of the OICR vision, so we look forward to working with Dr. Cameron over the coming years and wish him the best of luck with his research,” said Dr. Tom Hudson, OICR’s President and Scientific Director.

Currently, Cameron is facilitating a network that brings together experts in an effort to build capacity to support population intervention studies. Population intervention usually involves policies and programs that affect the entire population or significant sub-populations.

“We know instinctively that prevention is one of the most effective ways to fight cancer, but we need to know which strategies are most effective. This is why Dr. Cameron’s research is so important: through research, he is able to not only show which programs are most likely to reduce the incidence of cancer, but also how those programs can be optimized to make the maximum possible impact,” says Dr. Bob Phillips, OICR’s Deputy Director and a long-time colleague of Dr. Cameron’s in Ontario’s cancer research community.

One of the most active areas of population intervention is in tobacco policy. In recent years, governments around the world have employed a number of strategies to reduce smoking rates, paying particular attention to children and youth.

Canada has led the way with some of these initiatives, including graphic warning labels to illustrate the havoc that tobacco can wreak on the human body and bans of certain types of advertising. Ontario and several other provinces took these measures a step further with policy, effective June 1, 2008, that bans the display of tobacco products on retail store shelves so they will be seen only by customers who choose to purchase them.

Throughout his career, Cameron has made major contributions to research on tobacco control and its relationship with cancer prevention. His research and publications focus on a variety of tobacco-related topics, ranging from the factors that cause young people to the start smoking and the interventions that help adults quit.

Cameron’s outstanding record of achievement in research and training within the field of health promotion and disease prevention has attracted both national and international attention. He has contributed extensively to applied research on tobacco control and its translation into effective policies to better prevent widespread chronic diseases including lung cancer and heart disease.

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