Simon Chapman. Interview by Stephen Pincock.

摘要

Theday Simon Chapman and I meet for lunch on thecampus 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 cafe, 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.