In recognition of his lifetime achievements in the epidemiology of smoking behavior, John Pierce, PhD, Sam M. Walton Professor for Cancer Research in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, will receive the inaugural Harold Dorn Award for Translation of Epidemiologic Evidence into Public Health Policy and Practice. The award will be presented during the third North American Congress of Epidemiology (NACE) in Montreal, Canada, on Thursday, June 23, 2011.
Pierce was nominated for the Dorn Award by his colleague in the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, Ruth Patterson, PhD, professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. “The Dorn award is well-deserved recognition for Dr. Pierce's profound and fearless work over the past 30 years,” said Patterson. During that time, Pierce’s research has been critical to the development and evaluation of tobacco control programs which have led to a major decline in lung cancer in California.
Pierce is Associate Director for Population Sciences at the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and is responsible for developing Cancer Prevention Research into an area of strength at the Cancer Center. He is also a fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, and of the Society for Behavioral Medicine. Pierce has had wide international experience in cancer epidemiology, and preventive and social medicine at universities in Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United States. He has also held the post of Chief of the Epidemiology Branch of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Center for Diseases Control in Rockville, MD.
This Congress Award honors Harold Dorn, a demographer-epidemiologist, who was a critical leader of epidemiology at the National Cancer Institute and, later, at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute throughout the 1950s. Dorn directed the First and Second Population-Based Cancer Surveys and mentored many leading figures in translational research. This is the first time that this award will be made by the Congress, a joint meeting of all major epidemiological societies in North America.
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Media Contact: Kim Edwards, 619-543-6163, kedwards@ucsd.edu