Gary Chan
Dr Gary Chan is a UQ Research Fellow at the Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research (CYSAR) whose work focuses on substance abuse among young people. His principal research interest lies in the field of substance misuse prevention and the application of cutting-edge statistical methods for longitudinal analysis.
Current research
- Monitoring trends of substance use in the population using nationally representative data.
- Understanding the risk factors of initiation, escalation and remission of substance use from adolescence to mid-adulthood.
- Evaluating the public health benefit and harms of electronic cigarettes (personal vaporisor).
- Developing statistical methods to quantify the impact of adolescent substance use on later life outcomes such as mental health, educational achievement and employment.
Career highlights
- Dr Chan's work on new cannabis products has received international attention; he was invited as an international expert by a member in the Upper House of the UK Parliament to advise on future UK cannabis policy.
- Due to his expertise in substance abuse epidemiology and research methodologies he was appointed as a consultant at the United Nations Headquarters in Vienna where his role was to advise on improvement of the global surveillance system to monitor illicit substance production, trafficking and use in over 190 countries (2017-2018).
- Earlier this year, he was appointed as a consultant at the UN, again to analyse illicit crop cultivation data in South East Asia, identify high risk villages and advise on strategies to help opium farmers transition into licit crop cultivation.
