Biography
Brian R. Edlin, M.D., serves as Associate Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and Epidemiologist for the Center for the Study of Hepatitis C in New York, and Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York Downstate Medical College. Established in 2000 at The Rockefeller University, Weill Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the Center for the Study of Hepatitis C is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary center dedicated to the study of hepatitis C virus and hepatic disease. Dr. Edlin's research focuses on the clinical epidemiology of hepatitis C, as well as on the epidemiology and primary and secondary prevention of viral hepatitis, HIV infection, overdose, and other infectious and non-infectious health conditions affecting drug users, exploring the effectiveness of harm reduction strategies and evaluating methods to improve their effectiveness.
An internist with training in infectious diseases and epidemiology, Dr. Edlin joined the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and served for eight years in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, first as a medical epidemiologist and then as its Assistant Director for Science. From 1997 through 2002, Dr. Edlin directed the Urban Health Study at the University of California, San Francisco. The Urban Health Study, the longest running longitudinal study of injection drug users in the world, conducted medical, behavioral, and policy research and practiced harm reduction with injection drug users in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Dr. Edlin's work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Hepatology, and many other journals. Dr. Edlin has received numerous awards for his work, including the Donald C. Mackel Memorial Award, the Alexander D. Langmuir Award, and the Charles C. Shepard Science Award for his research on nosocomial transmission of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Dr. Edlin is a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a member of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease, and serves on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) HIV Prevention Trials Network Scientific Working Group on Substance Use. He has served on several NIH study sections and has been the recipient of numerous research grants, including eight R-01 awards from the NIH. In 2002, Dr. Edlin was asked to address the NIH Consensus Development Conference on the Management of Hepatitis C as an expert speaker on hepatitis C in injection drug users. The Consensus Panel adopted his recommendations, rescinding the restriction against treating drug users for hepatitis C in the new NIH guidelines, and recommending hepatitis C prevention, testing, and treatment programs for injection drug users and incarcerated persons. Dr. Edlin currently serves on the New York State Hepatitis C Advisory Council and the Viral Hepatitis and Substance Abuse Treatment Expert Consensus Panel of the U.S. Public Health Service's Center for Substance Abuse Treatment.
