Dr Frank J. Chaloupka

Dr Frank Chaloupka is currently Director of the UIC Health Policy Center and is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago's College of Business Administration, where he has been on the faculty since 1988. He is also a Professor in the Health Policy and Administration Division of UIC's School of Public Health and a Fellow at the University of Illinois' Institute for Government and Public Affairs. He is a Research Associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research's Health Economics Program and Children's Program, with which he has been affiliated since 1984. Dr. Chaloupka is Director of ImpacTeen: A Policy Research Partnership to Reduce Youth Substance Use in the UIC Health Research and Policy Centers. Dr. Chaloupka also directs the new International Tobacco Evidence Network and the economics component of the Trading Tobacco for Health Initiative. An economist, Dr. Chaloupka earned his B.A. from John Carroll University in 1984 and his Ph.D. from the City University of New York Graduate School and University Center.

Numerous professional publications and presentations have resulted from Dr. Chaloupka's research on the effects of prices and substance control policies on cigarette smoking and other tobacco use, alcohol use and abuse, and illicit drug use, as well as on various outcomes related to substance use and abuse. Much of this research has focused on youth and young adults. This research has been funded by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and others.

Dr. Chaloupka's research confirms that the demands for tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs are indeed responsive to changes in price, a finding with major implications for the structuring of public policies to reduce their consumption. Moreover, this research finds that youth and young adults are generally much more responsive to changes in price than older persons. Dr. Chaloupka contributed a section on the effects of cigarette taxes and prices on youth smoking for the 1994 Surgeon General's report, and recently completed a lengthy chapter on the economics of tobacco for the most recent Surgeon General's report on which he is Consulting Scientific Editor.

Most recently, he co-authored the World Bank's policy report: Curbing the Epidemic: Governments and the Economics of Tobacco Control and co-edited the volume Tobacco Control in Developing Countries containing the background papers prepared for the report. Dr. Chaloupka is on the editorial boards of Contemporary Economic Policy and Tobacco Control, and is a consultant to numerous governmental agencies, private organizations, and businesses.

In 1996 Dr. Chaloupka received the University Scholar Award from the University of Illinois for his research on the economic analysis of substance use and abuse. In addition, Dr. Chaloupka has served on the Technical Advisory Panel of the National Cancer Institute's American Stop Smoking Intervention Study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Healthy People 2000 and 2010 Tobacco Work Group, the National Institute of Health's Community Prevention and Control Study Section, and chairs the American Legacy Foundation's Policy Advisory Committee.

Back to Conference Speakers Section