Dr. Erin Hobin

Areas of Expertise

• population health intervention research
• experimental and quasi-experimental studies
• Food, alcohol, and cannabis policy
• Health promotion and health equity
• Integrated knowledge translation

Appointments

• Assistant Professor (status only), Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
• Assistant Professor (status only), Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Toronto
• Collaborating Scientist, Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, University of Victoria

Academic Degrees and Accreditations

• Doctor of Philosophy (Health Studies), School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo
• Master of Arts (Education), Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto

PHO Research Interests

• Developing and evaluating environmental and policy interventions targeting modifiable health conditions and risk behaviours.
• Applying quasi-experimental study designs to examine environmental and policy interventions as natural experiments.
• Understanding the differential impacts of population health interventions by key socio-demographic factors.
• Collaborating with policymakers and practitioners to develop research projects that are highly relevant and align with the needs of knowledge users.
• Developing evidence-informed alcohol container labels and examining the effectiveness of these labels as a tool for supporting consumers in making more informed and safer alcohol consumption decisions.

PHO Research Activities

• Launching a cohort study in the 3 Canadian territories to evaluate the impact of cannabis legalization in remote northern regions.
• Estimating the impact of alcohol deregulation in Ontario on future burden of alcohol consumption and harms overall and within priority sub-populations.
• Developing and evaluating the impact of alcohol container labels on consumers’ awareness and knowledge of alcohol-related health risks, Canada’s Low-Risk Drinking Guidelines, and on consumers’ alcohol drinking behaviours.
• Investigating the impact of a simple, standardized on-shelf nutrition labelling system on the nutritional quality of consumer food purchases in supermarkets in Canada.
• Examining the impact of the Ontario Healthy Choices Act on the nutritional quality of food and beverages on restaurant menus.
• Testing the efficacy of various formats for displaying calorie information for alcoholic beverages on restaurant menus among young adults.

Selected Publications

1. Myran DT, Smith BT, Cantor N, Li L, Saha S, Paradis C, Jesseman R, Tanuseputro P, Hobin E. Changes in the dollar value of per capita alcohol, essential, and non-essential retail sales in Canada during COVID-19. BMC Public Health. 2021;21(1):2162.
2. Hobin E, Smith B. Is another public health crisis brewing beneath the COVID-19 pandemic? Can J Public Health. 2020;111(3):392-6.
3. Zhao J, Stockwell T, Vallance K, Hobin E. The effects of alcohol warning labels on population alcohol consumption: an interrupted time series analysis of alcohol sales in Yukon, Canada. J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2020;81(2):225-37.
4. Hobin E, Weerasinghe A, Vallance K, Hammond D, McGavock J, Greenfield TK, et al. Testing alcohol labels as a tool to communicate cancer risk to drinkers: a real-world quasi-experimental study. J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2020;81(2):249-61.
5. Weerasinghe A, Schoueri-Mychasiw N, Vallance K, Stockwell T, Hammond D, McGavock J, Greenfield TK, Paradis C, Hobin E. Improving knowledge that alcohol can cause cancer is associated with consumer support for alcohol policies: findings from a real-world alcohol labelling study. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(2):398.

View more publications by Dr. Erin Hobin on PubMed.gov