Nadia Fairbairn

Dr. Nadia Fairbairn is an associate professor in the Division of Social Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of British Columbia and holds the Philip Owen Professorship in Addiction Medicine. She is a board-certified general internal medicine specialist with subspecialty certification in addiction medicine and practices clinically at St. Paul’s Hospital. Since 2024, she has held dual leadership roles within Vancouver Coastal Health as Medical Director, Research & Evaluation, Substance Use and Priority Populations, and Medical Director of the Regional Addictions Program.

As a scientist at the British Columbia Centre for Substance Use, Dr. Fairbairn leads a nationally and internationally recognized research program focused on closing the evidence-to-practice gap in addiction medicine through clinical, educational and research innovations. Her work aims to improve outcomes for people who use drugs, with a particular focus on opioid use disorder in the context of a toxic, fentanyl-dominated drug supply. Her research spans the epidemiology of addiction, quantitative and qualitative data analyses and clinical trials. She has over a decade of experience conducting observational and interventional research and has published extensively in these areas. She regularly serves on provincial and national clinical guideline committees to inform evidence-based treatment of substance use disorders and led the development of the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse national injectable opioid agonist treatment guideline (CMAJ, 2019). Her work on large-scale administrative data studies examining pharmacologic and behavioural strategies for opioid use disorder has been published in JAMA Network Open.

Dr. Fairbairn’s research on substance use is widely cited, with more than 135 peer-reviewed publications. She holds a Scholar Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and St. Paul’s Foundation and currently serves on the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction Advisory Board. She received the Department of Medicine Martin M. Hoffman Award for Excellence in Research in 2021 and the Faculty of Medicine Distinguished Achievement Award for Overall Excellence — Early Career in 2022.