Skip to main content
IDWeek 2023 Main banner
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.
Presentation Icons
Live Streamed
Live Streamed
On Demand
On Demand
Back

Benjamin P. Linas, MD, MPH (he/him/his)

Professor of Medicine
Boston University School of Medicine / Boston Medical Center
Boston, MA, United States

I am an Infectious Diseases physician scientist focused on the overlapping epidemics (syndemic) of substance use disorders and infectious diseases. I am also an HIV and HCV provider at Boston Medical Center and Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, where I provide primary care and sub-specialty management of HIV, HCV, and HIV/HCV co-infected patients, most of whom have opioid use disorder. My research investigates the comparative- and cost-effectiveness of interventions to identify and treat OUD, HIV, and HCV in the real-world, where resources are limited and the best strategies for obtaining good outcomes are not certain. I work closely with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to identify effective and cost-effective strategies for diagnosing HCV and linking infected individuals to care, and I am a member of the AASLD-IDSA HCV Guidance Panel. I serve as the Director of the Population Data and Modeling Core of the NIDA-sponsored Center for Health Economics of Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV, and HIV (CHERISH), as well as MPI of the NIDA Data2Action Modeling and Economics Resource Center (MERC). I combine my research focus with mentoring and integrate training into all of my work.

Since March of 2020, I have also been building a research program focused on improving the diversity and inclusiveness of clinical science. My work is informed by the Boston Medical Center (BMC) experience during the first wave of the COVID pandemic, when we saw tremendous disparity in access to clinical research studies followed by poorly generalizable studies of vaccines and treatments that led to ongoing medical mistrust. Living that crisis at BMC led me to develop the Clinical Research Network – which is a clinical trials infrastructure focused on conducting inclusive science at BMC, building a more inclusive research workforce in Massachusetts, and being a national thought leader developing improved models for conducting inclusive science. I am also not the PI of the Massachusetts Community Engagement Alliance of the NIH, an NHLBI-funded network seeking to advance community-engaged and equitable research models in America.

Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose

Presentation(s):