Skip to content

Statistician targets smoking policy

NANAIMO – Mary Thompson recognized by Vancouver Island University with honorary doctorate.
7257nanaimoMaryThompson
Mary Thompson will be given an Honorary Doctor of Science from Vancouver Island University at June 8 convocation ceremonies.

By Jenn McGarrigle

While health professionals get much of the credit these days for helping to ease people’s suffering from illnesses, the work of people like Mary Thompson, a scientist and statistician, has an impact on preventing those illnesses from occurring in the first place.

Thompson has devoted much of her career to working with social and health scientists to evaluate government policies and measures that help prevent illnesses and early deaths. Using statistical methods to collect and analyze data, her work has covered topics ranging from smoking cessation to health and the built environment.

In recognition of these contributions, Thompson will accept an Honorary Doctor of Science at Vancouver Island University’s convocation ceremony June 8 at 2:30 p.m.

“Statistics is all about working on real-world issues that are important to the public, which is something Thompson has done throughout her career,” says Don Noakes, dean of science and technology at VIU and nominator. “She’s well-recognized as one of the leading educators in the field of statistics. She’s made significant advancements in terms of methodologies and practice, but some of the areas she’s been working in, such as the health and social impacts of tobacco use, are significant both nationally and internationally.”

Thompson, a distinguished professor emerita of statistics at the University of Waterloo, spent all of her career at UW, starting out as a sessional lecturer and progressing to chair the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science and co-found the university’s Survey Research Centre before retiring in 2009.

One of the areas she’s most known for – tobacco control research – came about because of her involvement with the Survey Research Centre. Her colleague, Geoffrey T. Fong, from the university’s Department of Psychology, wanted to use surveys to evaluate the impact of tobacco control measures implemented by different governments in response to the World Health Organization’s 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

This framework contains rules governing the production, sale, distribution, advertisement and taxation of tobacco. Thompson designed the sampling and data collection methods for what became the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project, which is ongoing.

The project, which has worked with teams in 28 countries and received funding from both the U.S.-based National Institutes of Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, is the first international study examining the effect of government policies on smoking behaviour.

“My role in the ITC Project is to try to ensure the statistical soundness of the findings,” says Thompson. “The overarching questions are how governments should design and implement policies so as to limit the uptake of tobacco use, help those who use tobacco to reduce their consumption or to quit, and reduce environmental tobacco smoke.”

Through the ITC, she’s helped investigate the role of health warning labels on cigarette packages, the feasibility of smoke-free laws, the impact of advertising and packaging restrictions, the role of taxation and pricing systems and, most recently, the regulation of e-cigarettes.

Thompson’s findings over the years have been documented in more than 130 publications.

Jenn McGarrigle is a writer in VIU’s communications department.