Cliff Douglas is President and Chief Executive Officer of Global Action to End Smoking, an independent, nonprofit grantmaking foundation dedicated to accelerating the end of the smoking epidemic, which remains the leading preventable cause of death. He leads international efforts to elevate a holistic, science-based approach to ending smoking, emphasizing the continuum of risk among tobacco and nicotine products and prioritizing the needs of disadvantaged populations including in low- and middle-income countries.
He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where he has taught courses in tobacco control and policy and directed the Tobacco Research Network. His popular online course, Tobacco & Nicotine: Public Health ,Science, Policy, and Law, may be found at https://www.coursera.org/learn/tobacco-and-nicotine-public-health-science-policy-law. He served as the American Cancer Society’s Vice President for Tobacco Control and as Tobacco Control Policy Advisor for the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health and the U.S .Surgeon General during the Obama administration. He was a lead author of the landmark U.S. Government report, “Ending the Tobacco Epidemic: A Tobacco Control Strategic Action Plan for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”
As Special Counsel on Tobacco Issues for Rep. Martin T. Meehan, he prepared a 111-page prosecution memo that led the U.S. Attorney General to launch a criminal investigation and subsequently file the Justice Department’s successful civil racketeering action against the major tobacco companies. He also served on the legal team for state attorneys general in the litigation that resulted in the Master Settlement Agreement and in other successful landmark lawsuits on behalf of people who had suffered injury and death from smoking. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan.
