REEP Advisory Board (external members only)

Prof. Frank J. Chaloupka

University of Illinois at Chicago and UIC Health Policy Center

Frank Chaloupka is a Research Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Director of the UIC Health Policy Center. He is a Research Associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Health Economics Program and Children’s Program. Dr. Chaloupka's research focuses on the economics of health behaviors, including cigarette smoking and other tobacco use, alcohol use and abuse, illicit drug use, diet, and physical activity, as well as on various outcomes related to substance use and abuse.  Dr. Chaloupka 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.  More recently, he served as lead editor for the NCI and WHO monograph on The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control.

Dr Laurine Platzky

Laurine holds BA, B.Soc Sci and Master’s degrees in City and Regional Planning from UCT and a PhD in Regional Development Planning from the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. She worked 12 years in NGOs exposing apartheid forced removals, contributed to the democratic Constitution of South Africa and worked on the Reconstruction and Development Programme in the Presidency in 1996. In 1999 she was appointed Deputy Director General in the Western Cape Government and, among other things, led the writing of the Alcohol Harms Reduction White Paper. Currently, Laurine teaches in the Development Policy and Practice Masters Programme at UCT’s Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance and works part-time on special projects at the University of the Western Cape. She is a member of the Council of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and of the Governing Board of the Western Cape Liquor Authority. She consults locally and globally on development policy and practice.

Prof. Leslie London

Leslie London is Chair of Public Health Medicine in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town where he served as Director from 2007 to 2012. He is an active researcher in the field of Occupational and Environmental Health and leads the Health and Human Rights Programme. He has worked on alcohol harm reduction, alcohol policy and mitigating conflict of interest and corporate influence in public health policy. He is assisting groundwork towards the establishment of an independent Health Promotion and Development Foundation. He has served on national and international committees dealing with ethics and human rights in research and professional contexts and is active in the People’s Health Movement South Africa.

Dr Evan Blecher

Fiscal Policies for Health, World Health Organization

Evan Blecher is an economist in the Fiscal Policies for Health unit at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, where he is responsible for coordination of health taxes, including alcohol, sugar sweetened beverages and tobacco. Prior to WHO, he was a senior economist in the Health Policy Center of the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also is an honorary associate professor in the University of Cape Town’s, School of Economics. He has also worked as a senior economist in the American Cancer Society's Health and Economic Policy Research Program and was an affiliate in UCT's Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, where he served as the project director for the Economics of Tobacco Control Project.

Dr Maxime Campaore