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  3. Thomas Kerr

Thomas Kerr

Professor
Academic Appointment
Professor
Research Focus
Substance Use
Contact Info
thomas.kerr@ubc.ca
604-314-7817

Biography

Dr. Thomas Kerr is the director of research and a senior scientist at the BC Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU). He is a professor and head of the Division of Social Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and an associate faculty member in the School of Population and Public Health at UBC. 
 
Dr. Kerr’s primary research interests involve substance use, HIV/AIDS, health policy and service evaluation, and community-based research methods. His long history of involvement in health-care issues in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside includes ground-breaking work on peer-driven interventions, needle exchanges and supervised consumption services. He undertakes both qualitative and qualitative research and helps lead a range of studies funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the US National Institutes of Health.

Publications

  • BMC psychiatry -

    The effect of depressive symptoms on pain in a substance-using population with persistent pain: a cross-sectional cohort study.

    Voon P, Choi JC, Hayashi K, Milloy MJ, Buxton J, Kerr T
  • The Lancet. Public health -

    Effect of alternative income assistance schedules on drug use and drug-related harm: a randomised controlled trial.

    Richardson L, Laing A, Choi J, Nosova E, Milloy MJ, Marshall BD, Singer J, Wood E, Kerr T
  • Social science & medicine (1982) -

    "People need them or else they're going to take fentanyl and die": A qualitative study examining the 'problem' of prescription opioid diversion during an overdose epidemic.

    Bardwell G, Small W, Lavalley J, McNeil R, Kerr T
  • PLoS medicine -

    Supervised injection facility use and all-cause mortality among people who inject drugs in Vancouver, Canada: A cohort study.

    Kennedy MC, Hayashi K, Milloy MJ, Wood E, Kerr T
  • Journal of epidemiology and community health -

    Public health responses to the opioid crisis in North America.

    Kerr T
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