Steve Brown

Research interests

Professor Brown is a biostatistician whose research interests include the development of statistical methods for the design of community-based interventions, the analysis of longitudinal data collected from studies of interventions designed to affect health behaviours, and the design and analysis of observational studies of health behaviour.

His interests include design and analysis of cluster-randomized prevention trials, correlated discrete response data, generalized linear models, statistical consulting, and statistics education.

Education/biography

Steve Brown is a biostatistician, professor and a former chair of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science. He holds a cross-appointment in the Department of Health Studies and Gerontology. Professor Brown is co-director of the Population Health Research Group (formerly the Waterloo Smoking Projects) where he has been involved in the evaluation of smoking prevention programs since the first randomized trial conducted from Waterloo (WSPPI) in 1979. He was an investigator on the 1993 Canadian Cancer Society/Health Canada national survey of school-based smoking programs, and an author of the Technical Report of the 1994 and 2002 Health Canada Youth Smoking survey.

He has been involved in the design and analysis of several large randomized trials of school-based interventions designed to prevent youth from beginning to smoke. Current research projects include a national study of individual, school, and community influences on adolescent smoking; research on the effectiveness of smoking cessation programs using 1-800 lines; the evaluation of the Ontario Tobacco Strategy; the design and implementation of the 2006/2007 national Youth Smoking Survey for Health Canada; and a multi-country study of tobacco control policies.

Professor Brown's work has led to the development of tobacco control programs for youth, a system for generating feedback reports to schools concerning their students smoking and physical activity profiles, and the evaluation of the Ontario Tobacco Strategy.

Professor Brown is a principal investigator with the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit that was established under the Ontario Tobacco Strategy, and an associated scientist with the Centre for Behaviourial Research and Program Evaluation funded by the National Cancer Institute of Canada. He is also a member of the Canadian Tobacco Control Research Initiative, Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement team, and the Building the Evidence Base of Tobacco Control Policies: Transtheoretical Tobacco Use Research Center at Roswell Park, New York.

Selected publications

• Diemert, L.M., Bondy, S.J., Victor, C.J., Cohen, J., Garcia, J., Brown, K.S., McDonald, P., Ferrence, R., Selby, P., Stephens, T. (2008) Efficient screening for smoking status in recruitment of smokers for population-based research. To appear Journal of Nicotine and Tobacco Research.
• Cameron, R, Manske, S, Brown, K.S., Jolin, M.A., Murnaghan, D., Lovato, C. (2007) Integrating public health policy, practice, evaluation, surveillance, and research using local data collection and feedback systems: The example of the School Health Action Planning and Evaluation System. American Journal of Public Health, 97(4), 648-654.
• Nykiforuk, C.I.J., Campbell, S.H., Cameron, R., Brown, K.S., Eyles, J. (2007) Realtionships between community characteristics and municipal smoke-free bylaw status and strength. Health Policy, 80(2), 358-368.