Ruth Malone

Ruth Malone is a tobacco control researcher and policy analyst. She is a professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. She holds the Mary Harms/Nursing Alumni Endowed Chair since 2014.

Dr. Malone is internationally known for her research on the tobacco industry, focused broadly on the public relations aspects of the tobacco epidemic, particularly the strategic activities of U.S.-based companies aimed at undermining public health and tobacco control policy. She has also published studies examining the tobacco industry’s targeting of marginalized groups through both product advertising and corporate activities.

Currently, she is studying the tobacco industry’s ‘corporate social responsibility’ initiatives and their implications for public health policy, the tobacco industry and the U.S. military, and why businesses voluntarily stop selling tobacco. Her research is funded by the NIH (National Cancer Institute) and the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program. Dr. Malone is currently pursuing interests in how to begin to talk and think about an endgame strategy for the tobacco epidemic.

She has served as an expert consultant to the CDC, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the World Health Organization. Since 2009 to 2023, she was editor-in-chief of the leading tobacco control policy journal, Tobacco Control, published by the British Medical Association.