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Michael Fiore, MD, MPH, MBA

Dr. Michael Fiore, University of Wisconsin Hilldale Professor of Medicine, founded and has served as Director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI) since 1992. He is a clinically active general internist and preventive medicine specialist, treating patients for tobacco dependence.

Dr. Fiore is a nationally recognized expert on how to help patients quit smoking, providing perspectives to audiences ranging from Good Morning America to the United States Senate. He has written hundreds of articles, chapters, and books on cigarette smoking and contributed to U.S. Surgeon General Reports in 2020 and 2000.

Fiore served as chair of the panels that produced all three editions (1996, 2000, 2008) of the United States Public Health Service Clinical Practice Guideline: Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence, which provides a gold standard for healthcare providers. That PHS Guideline was updated and published in 2008 with the simultaneous endorsement of 58 leading medical and public health organizations.

He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including:

• Induction into to the national medical honor society Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) in 2022.
• The Hilldale Award in 2021.
• Bowdoin College’s Common Good Award.
• The Institute of Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) Physician Advocacy Merit Award.
• Election to the Association of American Physicians.
• Election to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) in 2012.

Dr. Fiore chaired the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Subcommittee on Tobacco Cessation of the Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health that produced a comprehensive plan for promoting tobacco cessation in the United States. In July 2003, he was one of five national recipients of the Innovators in Combating Substance Abuse Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In 2005, Dr. Fiore was asked by the United States Justice Department as part of their landmark lawsuit against the tobacco industry to craft a $130 billion, 25-year plan to assist 33 million smokers to quit.

He co-directed The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation National Program Offices, Addressing Tobacco in Managed Care and Addressing Tobacco in Healthcare Research Network.

Fiore’s chief research and policy focus has been to develop strategies to prompt clinicians and health care systems to intervene with patients who use tobacco. As part of this effort, he spearheaded the concept of expanding the vital signs to include tobacco use status. Recent research shows that 70 percent of patients visiting healthcare settings are asked about their smoking status. In total he has authored over 200 scientific publications.

Starting in 1999, Dr. Fiore was principal investigator for a five-year NIH-funded Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC) grant designed to understand tobacco dependence in order to prevent relapse to smoking. In September, 2004, he began his role as co-principal investigator of a second TTURC grant, seeking to examine tobacco dependence treatment and outcomes with an eye to determining the effectiveness of various treatments and matching those treatments to smokers wishing to quit.  In September 2009, he began serving as principal investigator for the third NIH/NCI P50 grant awarded to UW-CTRI, Engineering Effective Interventions for Tobacco Use: A Translational Laboratory. In September 2014, the NIH/NCI awarded UW-CTRI its fourth center grant (PO1) Optimized Chronic Care for Smokers: A Comparative Effectiveness Approach, with Drs. Fiore and Baker as PIs.

After graduating from Bowdoin College, Dr. Fiore completed medical school at Northwestern University in Chicago and his internal medicine training at Boston City Hospital. His postgraduate education included a Masters of Public Health from Harvard University. Dr. Fiore received additional training as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer for the United States Centers for Disease Control where he also completed a Preventive Medicine residency program at the United States Office on Smoking and Health before coming to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2009, Dr. Fiore earned an MBA from the University of Wisconsin School of Business.