Dr. Heimer is Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Methods Core at Yale’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA), and Director of the Yale office of the Connecticut Emerging Infections Program. The latter program, funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is one of eleven programs nationwide that seek to assess, through population-based surveillance, the public health impact of emerging infectious diseases and to evaluate methods for their prevention and control in the community. The Yale program focuses on chronic liver disease (especially hepatitis C), food-borne illnesses, and respiratory illnesses. In his work that is affiliated with CIRA, Dr. Heimer's research includes scientific investigation of the mortality and morbidity associated with injection drug use. Areas of investigation include syringe exchange programs, the survival of HIV and HCV in syringes, hepatitis B vaccination, overdose prevention and resuscitation, and pharmacological treatment of opiate addiction. His research combines laboratory, behavioural, operational, and ethnographic analyses to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention programs in preventing the negative medical consequences of injection drug use.