Clive Bates

Clive Bates has had a diverse career in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. After securing a degree in Engineering from Cambridge University, he worked in IT marketing for IBM. In a switch of career, he took a master’s degree in environmental technology and went on to work in the environment movement, initially for Greenpeace. During 1997-2003, he was Director of Action on Smoking and Health (UK), campaigning to reduce the harms caused by tobacco and supporting the early development of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. He has been an advocate for tobacco harm reduction since 1998. In 2003, he joined Prime Minister Blair’s Strategy Unit as a senior civil servant. He worked in senior sustainability roles in the public sector in the UK and for the United Nations in Sudan. At the start of 2013, he opened a new venture, Counterfactual, a consulting and advocacy practice focused on a pragmatic approach to sustainable development, energy and public health with a camping focus on harm reduction.

Andrzej Fal

Prof. Dr. Hab. Andrzej M. Fal. Specialist in internal medicine, allergology and public health, Head of the Clinic of Allergology, Lung Diseases and Internal Medicine at the State Medical Institute of the Ministry of Interior and Administration, Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the Collegium Medicum of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University. Previously Dean of this Faculty and Director of the Institute of Medical Sciences. Prof. Fal has been the President of the Board of the Polish Society of Public Health since 2014 and a member of the Governing Board of the European Public Health Association . He is also a member of the Main Council of Science and Higher Education, the State Council for Environmental Protection and several Polish and foreign scientific societies. For two terms he was a member of the Supervisory Board of the Polish-American Fulbright Foundation, the Board of the World Bronchology Association, represented Poland in the European Medicines Agency (EMA). He was a member of the International Board of the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology (AAAAI), a member of the Public Health Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He completed medical and research internships at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, USA), Brompton Hospital (London, UK), Uppsala University Hospital (Vesteras, Sweden). He is the author and co-author of over 350 publications in the field of allergology, internal medicine and public health with a combined IF >350; editor of allergology textbooks, including 'Allergology, allergic diseases, asthma' and 'Pharmacotherapy of asthma and allergic diseases', and a public health textbook. In 1994–1996 he was the national publisher of the 'European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Newsletter'. He has promoted eighteen doctors. He was awarded the Gold Cross of Merit and the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. He has won a number of awards, including in recent years: Vector of the 35th Anniversary (2025), Medical Personality of the 35th Anniversary (2024), Golden OTIS - twice, Ambassador of Polish Congresses (2024), and Leader of the Year in Public Health - twice.

Karl Erik Lund

Ph.D., Senior Researcher, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norway

Dr. Karl E. Lund is currently senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. He was Research Director at the Norwegian Institute for Alcohol and Drug Research for the period 2006-2018. Dr. Lund has been involved in tobacco control work since the mid-1980s, working at the Norwegian Council on Tobacco or Health and the Norwegian Cancer Society, and received the Norwegian Medical Association’s Award in preventive medicine in 2000. He is well published within tobacco research, and has been called to give talks before authorities in several countries. Dr. Lund has been a member of several expert committees including WHO’s International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC). He is currently Associate Editor in the scientific journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research and also a Senior Associate Editor of Tobacco Regulatory Science. Dr. Lund chaired the organizing committee of the 2019 European SRNT conference. Dr. Lund has been an expert witness for the plaintiff in several tort liability lawsuits against the tobacco industry. He holds a PhD in Sociology from 1996 and he was formally assessed with qualifications as Professor in 2009.

Damian Sweeney

Damian is a former smoker who quit with vaping in 2016 after numerous unsuccessful quit attempts using traditional smoking cessation methods. Shortly after that the TPD came into full effect, Damian got involved in advocacy, contacting local and national politicians to argue against restrictive regulations for vaping products. Damian is the current Chair of the New Nicotine Alliance Ireland, a consumer advocacy association and registered charity which he co-founded in 2019. Later that year NNA Ireland joined ETHRA, an independent umbrella organisation for consumer organisations, as one of its 24 partner associations across Europe. ETHRA has been recognised as a stakeholder by the EU institutions and Damian has taken part in consultations at every stage of the preparations and revisions of the Tobacco Products Directive and the Tobacco Excise Directive, as well as numerous public consultations in EU member states. ETHRA continues to advocate for evidence-based risk-proportionate regulations for non-combustible nicotine products.