Invited Review Series

Abstract

The Invited Review Series ‘Tobacco and Lung Health’ continues in this issue with two articles: ‘Women and tobacco’ by Judith Mackay and Amanda Amos and ‘Respiratory health effects of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke’ by Moira Chan-Yeung and Helen Dimich-Ward. Dr Mackay is a medical doctor and Senior Policy Advisor to the World Health Organization. She is based in Hong Kong where she is the Director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control. She has published widely, and has received many international awards for her work as a health advocate and campaigner for tobacco control. Dr Mackay regards it as a great compliment to have been singled out by the tobacco industry as a person of interest. Her co-author on the paper ‘Women and Tobacco’ is Dr Amanda Amos, a Senior Lecturer in Health Promotion at the University of Edinburgh. Dr Amos’ research has focussed on a range of smoking issues including the influence of the media on smoking, smoking and socio-economic disadvantage, as well as smoking uptake and cessation in the mid-teens. She is an advisor on smoking issues to health departments and health promotion agencies in the UK. The principal research interests of Professor Moira Chan-Yeung, Professor of Medicine at the University of British Columbia, Canada, centre on occupational lung disease as well as environmental and genetic risk factors for asthma and lung cancer. She has also undertaken considerable work on the primary prevention of asthma. She has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles and 50 book chapters as well as co-editing two books. Her co-author, Helen Dimich-Ward PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia where she works as a BC Lung Association/Canadian Institutes of Health Research Investigator. Her area of expertise is the epidemiology of occupational and environmental respiratory health. Her major research focus is women's occupational health including studies of health care and hospitality workers. The Series ‘Cells of the Lung’ resumes with Dr John Upham's contribution, ‘The role of dendritic cells in immune regulation and allergic airway inflammation’. Dr Upham graduated with honours from the University of Queensland then completed training in respiratory medicine in Brisbane, before moving to Perth to do a PhD on regulation of T-cell activation in the lung. After a period of postdoctoral studies at McMaster University, Canada, he returned to Perth in 1998. His major research interest is the role of dendritic cells in the initiation and maintenance of allergic airway inflammation, an interest that he combines with clinical practice in respiratory medicine. He was recently awarded a 5-year clinical research fellowship by the National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia, and is the author of over 30 publications.