KEYNOTE SPEAKERS 

Prof Pamela Ling

Dr. Pamela Ling is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California San Francisco. Her research focuses on tobacco, media, social marketing, and young adults. The work includes analyses of thousands of previously secret tobacco industry documents detailing industry marketing strategies. Dr. Ling has special interest in the marketing of novel tobacco products including e-cigarettes, the global proliferation of U.S. tobacco marketing strategies, and using market research strategies to inform innovative clinical and public health interventions. She has contributed to three Surgeon General’s Reports on Tobacco and has been a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation since 2016. Dr. Ling has an active clinical practice in General Internal Medicine.

Prof Janet Hoek

Janet's first degrees were in English Literature. She also studied Botany, Zoology, Microbiology, and French – she is currently trying to regain her fluency in French. Her Honours research examined nineteenth century poetry and she explored irony in Beowulf, a very early medieval poem, in her Masterate thesis. She later completed a post-graduate diploma in marketing and her PhD examined question wording effects in surveys. Janet is co-Director of ASPIRE Aotearoa, a University of Otago Research Centre whose members undertake research into smokefree policy and the regulation of nicotine products.

Janet has led several Health Research Council projects and is currently PI of the Whakahā o te Pā Harakeke programme, funded by the Health Research Council. Her work examining plain (or standardised) packaging and tobacco branding informed policy in New Zealand and internationally. She followed up this work by examining novel on-pack tobacco warnings and the impact of complementing on-pack warnings with efficacy messages.

Janet has also undertaken several studies into vaping. She led a feasibility study assessing 'smart' e-cigarettes and explored whether and how people transition from smoking to vaping. She has also explored vaping uptake among people who smoke and young people who do not smoke, and she has tested strategies to encourage full transition from smoking to e-cigarettes among people who smoke deterring uptake among people who do not smoke. She received the 2022 Universities New Zealand Critic and Conscience of Society Award for her work documenting the harms vaping imposes on young people.

She has also received funding from the Royal Society Marsden Fund. She led a project that critically evaluated tobacco industry arguments framing smoking as an “informed choice”. Subsequent work probed identity shifts among people moving from smoking to vaping, and becoming nicotine free. She has also worked on a Marsden study examining tobacco companies’ self-proclaimed “transformation”.Janet has been a member of several NGO and government advisory groups, provided evidence to government and Select Committees, and was a member of an Australian government expert advisory group overseeing the introduction and refreshment of plain packaging. She has sat on several research grant and selection committees, as well as strategy development and policy groups.

Shane Kawenata Bradbrook

Tribal affiliations: Tāmanuhiri, Rongowhakaata, Kahungunu   

The tobacco industry is an impediment to meeting the dreams and aspirations of our indigenous ancestors. It is an industry that has maintained a presence despite over-whelming evidence that demonstrates it sells a product that addicts and kills its user. As such, the industry deserves to be dismantled and buried with the same cynicism and disrespect as it has shown for the millions of people’s lives that it has single-handily destroyed over the past 100 years. He is an astute change agent, innovator and creative that has consistently called out the tobacco industry for its self-serving existence.   

Shane is a passionate political advocate who seeks social justice for Māori through the removal of tobacco from the Māori & broader NZL communities. It is a commitment he made some twenty years ago. Progressing legislation, regulations & policy change through the NZL Parliament and relevant government departments. He was a key figure in leading the inquiry on the tobacco industry that ultimately led to a Smokefree Nation 2025.  

He brings a broad experience operating in development of the UN-WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, on the UN Ad Hoc Interagency Taskforce on Tobacco Control & developing an Agreement by the UN - WHO and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on tobacco use.    Shane has worked with indigenous communities in Australia, Canada, USA and South America. He has also provided advocacy advice and support in the Pacific: Hawai’i, Tonga, Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Timor-Leste.   

Shane was awarded the prestigious Nigel Gray Award in 2009. He was the first New Zealand and indigenous recipient of this Award. He also received the Combined Universities Centre for Rural Health Fellowship and a Healthways Fellowship. Shane is a former participant in the International Visitors Programme – US State Department/Fulbright NZ: Washington DC Graduate School. Shane is currently a board member of the Global Alliance for Tobacco Control (GATC).