Scientific Advisory Committee

Expertise: Social epidemiology, health justice

J. Robin Moon, DPH, MPH, MIA, is co-founder and chief strategy officer of sana solutions LLC. She is a transdisciplinary social epidemiologist, a practitioner and entrepreneur for health justice, and an educator in public health. Robin is a seasoned public health strategist and executive management professional with over 25 years of experience in private and public sectors. 

She holds degrees from Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago. She also holds faculty positions at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy, School of Medicine,the  Institute for Health Equity, and the Urban Food Policy Institute. She is an Aspen Health Innovators fellow. Robin is the vice-chair of The Examination’s board of directors.

Expertise: Environmental health, pollution

Dr. Tadesse Amera is an environmental scientist based in Ethiopia, contributing to national, regional and global environmental research, policy and action. He is the Executive Director of Pesticide Action Nexus Association Ethiopia (PAN-Ethiopia) and the international Co-Coordinator of Pesticide Action Network-International (PAN-International). He also served as the co-chair of the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) for six years. He is best known for pioneering agro-ecology initiatives that model organic alternatives to eliminate highly hazardous pesticide use in cotton cultivation in Ethiopia and in advancing this for the global phase out of Highly Hazardous Pesticides from Agriculture at the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM) in 2023 and at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in 2024. Dr. Amera has his first degree in Environmental Health, a Master of Public Health (MPH) and a PhD in Environmental Communication.

Expertise: Commercial determinants of health, focusing on tobacco control, pharmaceutical policy, and public health

Professor Lisa Bero, Chief Scientist, Center for Bioethics and Humanities, Professor Medicine and Public Health at the University of Colorado, is a leader in evidence synthesis, meta-research and studying commercial determinants of health, focusing on tobacco control, pharmaceutical policy, nutrition, chemicals and public health. She is internationally known for her studies on the integrity of research evidence that is used to influence health policy. She is a founding member of the Center to End Corporate Harm at the University of California, San Francisco. She was co-chair of the Cochrane Governing Board from 2014 to 2018 and is senior editor at Research Integrity, Cochrane. She studies the association of reporting bias, methodological characteristics, funding bias, conflicts of interest, and research integrity problems with the design and outcomes of research. 

She pioneered the utilization of internal industry documents and transparency databases to understand corporate tactics and motives for influencing research evidence. Professor Bero received a PhD in pharmacology from Duke University and has postdoctoral training in health policy and epidemiology. Prior to joining the University of Colorado, she was a professor at the University of Sydney where she founded the Evidence, Policy and Influence Collaborative at the Charles Perkins Centre. Professor Bero has chaired and served on international committees related to conflicts of interest, evidence and decisions, and evidence synthesis. She is also a longtime contributor to national and international consensus committees, including serving as a member of the Guideline Review Committee, and as Chair of the Essential Medicines Committee for the World Health Organization.

Expertise: Public health communication, public health ethics and health policy

Sarah Gollust is a professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Dr. Gollust is a social scientist studying the intersections of communication, politics, and health policy. In her past research, she has examined media influences and public opinion around significant health policy issues, including obesity, health disparities, the Affordable Care Act, and cancer screening. She is also a co-director of the Collaborative on Media and Messaging for Health & Social Policy, an interdisciplinary group of researchers who study how media and messaging shape public opinions, attitudes, and behaviors. Dr. Gollust completed a postdoctoral fellowship in population health at the University of Pennsylvania and she received her PhD in Health Services Organization and Policy from the University of Michigan.

Expertise: Chronic diseases, diet-related disease and public policy

Marcela Reyes is a surgeon, Master in Nutrition and PhD in Nutrition and Food at the University of Chile. She is an associate professor of the Public Nutrition Unit of the Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology (INTA) of the University of Chile. In addition, she is a principal researcher at the Center for Research in Food Environments and Prevention of Chronic Diseases Associated with Nutrition (CIAPEC-INTA). Her lines of research focus on the study of diet and obesity, in addition to its relationship with cardiometabolic diseases. She has been involved in public policy issues focused on improving diet and preventing non-communicable diseases from a population perspective, focusing research on longitudinal follow-ups of participants in different stages of the life cycle, in addition to the characterization of food environments and the influence of these on our diet.

Expertise: Structural and commercial determinants of health, focusing on alcohol, sugar sweetened beverage, firearm, social media, and fossil fuel industries

Dr. Nason Maani is lecturer in inequalities and global health policy with the Global Health Policy Unit at the University of Edinburgh. Nason's research interests center on the structural and commercial determinants of health, with a special interest in how they shape public understanding and policy. This includes primary research on the alcohol, sugar sweetened beverage, firearm, social media, and fossil fuel industries, as well as policy research on the relationships between underinvestment, commercial influence and inequity. Along with colleagues, he also contributes to writing in more public facing fora, videos and other media to communicate research to wider audiences , and hosts Money Power Health, a podcast on the commercial drivers of ill health, available on Apple and Spotify. He has served as a consultant and expert for the World Health Organization on the commercial determinants of health, and is an editor, alongside Sandro Galea and Mark Petticrew, of the book "The Commercial Determinants of Health," released by Oxford University Press. He is currently a co-investigator on an NIHR Three Schools-funded scoping review of the commercial determinants of mental health.

Expertise: Health promotion and community health, commercial determinants of health

Dr. Jihad Makhoul is a professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Community Health at the American University of Beirut. She has led numerous research studies examining the social and structural determinants of well-being among war-affected populations in Lebanon, including internally displaced persons, impoverished communities, child laborers, and Iraqi and Palestinian refugees, using community-engaged approaches and qualitative research methodologies. Her current work focuses on applied research ethics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. She has also recently developed a strong interest in the commercial determinants of health in Lebanon and is a member of the Global Commercial Determinants of Health Network. Her research explores the roles of commercial actors in times of war and crisis, with particular attention to the arms industry and the influence of commercial interests on academic and humanitarian work.

Expertise: Atmospheric chemistry, air quality and impacts on human health, climate change

Abdus Salam completed his Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Chemistry and Master of Science (MSc) in Physical-Inorganic Chemistry from University of Dhaka. He did his PhD in Atmospheric Analytical Chemistry at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, and worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at two Canadian institutions. He has established two atmospheric science research observatories (Urban Dhaka and coastal Bhola Island) in Bangladesh and has collaborated with institutions globally including NASA (U.S.), Duke University (U.S.), Shibaura Institute of Technology (Japan), the Center of Research for Environment Energy and Water (Nepal) and many more. His research interests are atmospheric chemistry, air quality and impacts on human health, climate change and ecosystems. He has published more than hundred research articles in peer reviewed international Journals. He has organized many national and international workshops and conferences at home and abroad. He frequently speaks in the media on environmental issues especially air pollution, its causes, impacts and mitigations. He has served on various international committees including International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) as a co-chair. Currently he is also serving as a Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh.

Expertise: Environmental determinants of disease and health inequities

Tracey Woodruff, PhD MPH, is the Alison S. Carlson Endowed Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California - San Francisco, and director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment.

She is a recognized expert on environmental pollution exposures during pregnancy and its effects on prenatal and child health, as well as on her innovations in translating and communicating scientific findings for clinical and policy audiences. Before joining UCSF, Tracey was a senior scientist and policy advisor for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Policy.