Simon Chapman

Abstract

The day Simon Chapman and I meet for lunch on the campus of Sydney University, he's dapper in black corduroy suit and grey striped shirt. Coincidentally, I catch him a few days later on the ABC's flagship late night news programme talking about Australia's latest tobacco control efforts. He's wearing the same suit, and it works well on television. Chapman, a professor of public health with 14 books and many peer-reviewed publications to his name, is clearly someone who takes his interactions with the media seriously. Considering the fields Chapman works in, his active engagement in the media isn't surprising. His “meat and potatoes” is tobacco control, but he's also studied drug company influence on doctors, gun control, and anti-immunisation lobbies. His work has been widely recognised on the international stage. In 1997, for example, he won WHO's World No Tobacco Day Medal. In 2003 he was awarded the American Cancer Society's Luther L Terry Award for outstanding individual leadership in tobacco control. As we tuck into pizza and salad in a quiet outdoor café, Chapman describes himself as intellectually sceptical, and says a colleague once described him as a “polemicist”. He doesn't seem terribly concerned by the slander. He comes across as frank but also as friendly, open, and keen to speak from a solid evidence base. It's easy to see why he has become a go-to man when Australian journalists want an academic voice on hot public health issues. In fact, Chapman says he finds it hard to believe that his colleagues don't take more seriously the opportunity offered by the media. “In tobacco, you're doing the work because you want to do something about this serious health problem,” he says. “A surprising number of researchers say they don't concern themselves with impacts on society. I find that remarkable.” He advises colleagues to take the whole media thing more seriously. He certainly does and is researching how to better understand and improve media coverage of public health issues through The Australian Health News Research Collaboration. Coffee comes, and our conversation moves on to the medicalisation of human difference, and the risk that Australia may soon have to deal with climate refugees. Chapman is a busy man with fingers in many pies, including giving advice to governments in Australia and beyond. In his spare time he plays in a “parents” rock band called the Faux Pas. Eventually, he has to leave. A few weeks after our lunch, I hear him explaining the implications of new tobacco legislation in the USA. It's on the radio, but I wonder if he's wearing the same suit.