Jan Klimas

Dr Jan Klimas, M.Sc., Ph.D. completed his doctoral training in Slovakia where he studied quality of social interaction, personality characteristics and personal changes in drug users across a range of settings. His debut Cochrane systematic review laid foundations for his current research on implementing psychosocial interventions in opioid agonist treatment in Ireland, U.S. and Canada. This work received the INVEST award from the National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the best paper award from Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland (RAMI). He recently examined training of healthcare providers in the care of people with substance use disorders and related harms - a project awarded by the Early-career Fellowship award from the International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM).

Since his undergraduate programme, Jan has been actively involved in community organisations, first as an Outreach Drugs Worker and later on as Assistant Project Manager in a needle exchange project. He further utilised the knowledge and expertise gained from this work in a community unemployment service (Hungary), in community drugs initiative for young drug users (Ireland) and in a stabilisation day programme for people contemplating a reduction in their use of drugs (Dublin). Jan's professional and research interests lay broadly in the areas of harm reduction, addiction treatment and qualitative methodologies (http://ucd-ie.academia.edu/janklimas).

He is jointly affiliated as Researcher with the Primary Connections research group at the University College Dublin.

Contact phone number: (604) 806-9142