Dr. Tim Naimi

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 School of Public Health and Social Policy. 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. 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.

Projects

• Alcohol and Health Web App
• An estimation of the health and economic costs of alcohol use in Finland and the impact on these of the privatization of the Finnish government alcohol monopoly, Alko
• An evaluation of alternative methods of presenting health risks of alcohol to young adults
• An updated systematic review and meta-analysis of alcohol use and all-cause mortality
• A review of the evidence regarding alcohol and COVID-19
• Canadian Alcohol Policy Evaluation
• Effects of COVID-19 on alcohol and cannabis sales and alcohol- and cannabis-related hospitalizations and deaths in BC
• Estimates of Alcohol-Attributable Deaths and Years of Potential Life Lost in the United States and Analytic Methods
• Impact of Marijuana Policies on Alcohol Use and Alcohol-Related Mortality
• Modelling the relationship between tax and price policies and impacts on alcohol consumption and harms in different socio-economic groups in Canada
• Strengthening safety nets to improve access to substance use and mental health services to optimize youth-determined health and wellness
• Systematic error and confounding: Meta-analyses of alcohol and disease
• The potential impact of alcohol minimum unit pricing and alcoholic beverage labelling as a cancer prevention intervention in Canada, by socioeconomic status, at the national, provincial and territorial levels
• Unsupervised Alcohol Consumption on Municipal Properties in BC

Publications

• Alcohol policies, firearm policies, and suicide in the United States: a lagged cross-sectional study
• Alcohol sales in Canadian liquor outlets as a predictor of subsequent COVID-19 infection rates: a time-series analysis
• Associations Between COVID-19 Alcohol Policy Restrictions and Alcohol Sales in British Columbia: Variation by Area-based Deprivation Level
• Calorie Intake from Alcohol in Canada: Why New Labelling Requirements are Necessary
• Commentary: The burden of alcohol on health care during COVID‐19
• Commentary: Time for carefully tailored set of alcohol policies to reduce health‐care burden and mitigate potential unintended consequences?
• Estimated Deaths Attributable to Excessive Alcohol Use Among US Adults Aged 20 to 64 Years, 2015 to 2019
• Finnish alcohol policy at the crossroads: The health, safety and economic consequences of alternative systems to manage the retail sale of alcohol
• Improving Estimates of Alcohol-Attributable Deaths in the United States: Impact of Adjusting for the Underreporting of Alcohol Consumption
• Policy Brief: Not Just a Walk in the Park: Unsupervised Alcohol Consumption on Municipal Properties in BC
• Rating the comparative efficacy of state-level cannabis policies on recreational cannabis markets in the United States
• Report: Not Just a Walk in the Park: Unsupervised Alcohol Consumption on Municipal Properties in BC
• Sales and Revenue from Regulated Cannabis Products in BC: October 2018-December 2020
• The Cannabis Policy Scale: A New Research and Surveillance Tool for U.S. States
• Trends in Cannabis Involvement and Risk of Alcohol Involvement in Motor Vehicle Crash Fatalities in the United States, 2000‒2018
• Underestimation of alcohol consumption in cohort studies and implications for alcohol's contribution to the Global Burden of Disease