APA Monthly Webinar: Smoking Guns – Generating Evidence to Inform Tobacco Control

Abstract: Despite declining prevalence of daily smoking (8.3% in 2022-23 vs 11.0% in 2019 in people aged 14 years and over), smoking remains Australia’s leading cause of premature death and disability. This talk will include a brief overview of the tobacco epidemic in the context of policy changes in Australia, a research showcase demonstrating why smoking remains a key health challenge and insights into some of the challenges working in tobacco control research.

 The research showcase will present a study in close collaboration with colleagues from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the NSW Cancer Council, quantifying the relationship of tobacco smoking to cause-specific mortality in Australia. Hazard ratios based on data from the 45 and Up Study and its linked datasets were applied to population-level data from Australia, to estimate deaths attributable to tobacco smoking. Findings showed that current (vs never) smoking increased the risk of dying from 23 common causes of death, and smoking is estimated to kill >24,000 people in Australia every year - at least 66 deaths a day.

The importance of statistical rigour in synthesis of evidence and conduct of tobacco control research cannot be understated. 

Biography: Professor Grace Joshy leads the Statistical Methods in Large Scale Epidemiology program of work at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, ANU. Her research is fuelled by various collaborative projects, particularly a large body of work on tobacco harm reduction and e-cigarette use; CVD/cancer epidemiology and survivorship research; and Aboriginal health projects. She is passionate about innovative application of biostatistics to policy relevant epidemiological research in chronic disease, Aboriginal health and health service use. 

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