Ruth Malone

Ruth Malone is a tobacco control researcher and policy analyst. She is professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. She has been the editor-in-chief of Tobacco Control since 2009. She holds the Mary Harms/Nursing Alumni Endowed Chair since 2014.

Dr. Malone is internationally known for her research on the tobacco industry, focused broadly on the public relations aspects of the tobacco epidemic, particularly the strategic activities of U.S.-based companies aimed at undermining public health and tobacco control policy. She has also published studies examining the tobacco industry’s targeting of marginalized groups through both product advertising and corporate activities.

Currently, she is studying the tobacco industry’s ‘corporate social responsibility’ initiatives and their implications for public health policy, the tobacco industry and the U.S. military, and why businesses voluntarily stop selling tobacco. Her research is funded by the NIH (National Cancer Institute) and the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program. Malone is currently pursuing interests in how to begin to talk and think about an endgame strategy for the tobacco epidemic.

Specific tobacco-related subjects she has researched include the presence of smoking in video games in the absence of warnings, and the industry's efforts to fight attempts by Congress and military officials to raise the price of tobacco products for the military to that for civilians.

Malone was part of an international team that contributed to the WHO report on Tobacco Industry Interference with Tobacco Control, which was utilized for implementation efforts related to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Since 2009, she has served as editor-in-chief of the top international policy/population-focused journal in the tobacco field, Tobacco Control. She received the 2014 Helen Nahm Research Lecture Award and the 2012 Hal Luft Mentoring Award.

She has served as an expert consultant to the CDC, the US Department of Justice, and the World Health Organization. Since 2009, she has served as editor-in-chief of the leading tobacco control policy journal, Tobacco Control, published by the British Medical Association.