Dr Anna Gilmore receives International Award for Outstanding Use of Tobacco Industry Documents
20 March 2009
Dr Anna Gilmore and Professor Stanton Glantz.
The 2009 International Award for Outstanding Use of Tobacco Industry Documents awarded by the
Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Center
for Tobacco Control Research and Education has been awarded to
Dr Anna Gilmore of
the University of Bath, Tobacco Control Research Group.
Dr Gilmore’s award was presented by Professors Richard Daynard and Stanton Glantz at the
closing ceremony of the ‘World Conference on Tobacco or Health’ in Mumbai, India, on March 12,
2009. The PHAI and UCSF praised Dr Gilmore’s significant and well-recognised contribution to public
health through the use of internal tobacco industry documents. Honouring her innovative application
of these documents to improve the health of people around the world and furthering the goals of
tobacco prevention and control.
On receiving the award Dr Gilmore thanked Professors Daynard and Glantz profusely and said “I
am both honoured and humbled. This award is given in recognition of work on industry documents
which have proven essential to holding the tobacco industry to account and thus to furthering
tobacco control policy developments around the world. It is a reflection not of my work, but the
collaborative efforts of all those I have been lucky enough to work with.” She said afterwards that
such work would not have been possible without funders recognising its importance.
Dr Gilmore leads a team of researchers in the Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG) which she
established jointly with Dr Linda Bauld when she moved to the University of Bath in August 2007.
The group, based across two faculties – the School for Health and the Department of Social and
Policy Sciences - currently includes 12 staff and 3 PhD students. Two of the research staff work
exclusively on tobacco industry document analysis on grants Dr Gilmore holds from the Health
Foundation, the US National Institutes of Health and the Smokefree Partnership.
The TCRG plays a major role in the newly formed UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies - one
of five UK centres of public health excellence established in 2008 and comprising seven UK
universities. The group’s work aims to contribute to efforts to reduce the tobacco epidemic.
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable ill health and death in the world, accounting for more
than 5 million deaths per year globally, and 114,000 in the UK.
This is the second time in a space of months that Dr Gilmore’s work has been internationally
recognised. Last year she was the recipient of the World Health Organizations World No Tobacco Day
Medal for “outstanding efforts in [the] research of tobacco control and tobacco industry strategies
in Europe.”
$2500 accompanies the award which will be used to support the tobacco industry document work
of the group.
- Dr Anna Gilmore is a Clinical Reader in Public Health, a Health Foundation Clinician Scientist and Honorary Consultant in Public Health Medicine BANES Primary Care Trust
- Dr Gilmore was also recently invited to become one of the Senior Editors on the journal Tobacco Control (the leading journal in the field) and took up this position in January 2009
- The award was previously presented in 2007 to Pascal Diethelm, President of OxyRomandie (Switzerland), Vice-President of CNCT France (aka the National Committee Against Smoking) and the Geneva representative of the Framework Convention Alliance.
