Dr. Tim Naimi

Dr. Tim Naimi
Position
Director
Contact
Office: HWB 273B
250-472-5445

Timothy Naimi M.D., M.P.H is the director of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and professor at UVic’s Division of Medical Sciences. He is a physician and alcohol epidemiologist from Boston Medical Center (BMC), and was a Professor with the Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. He also is an affiliate professor with UBC's Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine.

Tim’s research interests mostly lie in substance-use epidemiology, particularly binge drinking and the health effects of moderate drinking, with a recent focus on prevention and effective public policies for reducing substance-use-related problems for alcohol and cannabis.

“My public-health approach to substance use, and alcohol more specifically, really dovetails well with a lot of the work at CISUR,” says Naimi. “I think CISUR is one of the few research institutions in the world that focusses on a public-health, population-level approaches to dealing with substance use and substance-use problems, as opposed to most of the work that is done, which is more clinically oriented.”

Dr. Naimi received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College, his M.D. degree from the University of Massachusetts, and his M.P.H degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed a combined internal medicine-pediatrics residency program at the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Epidemiologic Intelligence Officer program with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and a preventive medicine residency with the CDC. Prior to his time at Boston Medical Center, Dr. Naimi worked as a clinician for the U.S. Indian Health Service, and as a senior epidemiologist with the Alcohol Team at CDC. His current research interests, for which he receives grant support from the National Institutes of Health and CDC, include binge drinking, youth drinking, health effects of low-dose ethanol, and substance use policy including the impact of alcohol control policies, cannabis policies, and opioid policies on substance use and other health outcomes. He has co-authored more than 100 published manuscripts and book chapters.

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