Rate My Professor Kora DeBeck

Dr. Kora DeBeck is a Distinguished Professor of Substance Use and Drug Policy in the School of Public Policy at Simon Fraser University. She serves as a CIHR Applied Public Health Chair, a Dorothy Killam Fellow, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. She is also a Research Scientist with the BC Centre on Substance Use and the Principal Investigator for the At-Risk Youth Study (ARYS), a longitudinal cohort study of more than 1,200 street-involved youth who use drugs in Vancouver that began in 2005 and is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the US National Institutes of Health Research. Her academic background includes a BA (honours) in Political Science from McGill University (2002), a Masters in Public Policy from Simon Fraser University (2006), a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of British Columbia (2010), and a post-doctoral fellowship with the Division of AIDS in the Department of Medicine at UBC and the Centre for Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2012).

DeBeck specializes in substance use and drug policy with a background in social epidemiology. She employs longitudinal cohort methodologies and innovative approaches to inform and evaluate policy interventions aimed at promoting the health and well-being of people who use drugs. Her research has a particular focus on preventing high-risk substance use, infectious diseases, and other drug-related harms among structurally marginalized young people. With more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, she has demonstrated that models of drug law enforcement are often ineffective and produce unintended negative harms, including hindering HIV prevention efforts and disproportionately affecting Indigenous youth. Her work has documented deficiencies in addiction treatment access and harm reduction services for young people who use drugs. DeBeck has received CIHR doctoral, post-doctoral, and new investigator awards, as well as a Michael Smith Health Research BC/St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation-PHCRI Career Scholar Award and a Distinguished SFU Professorship. She has secured more than 50 grants totaling over $50 million. Her contributions have influenced shifts in drug policy toward frameworks addressing systemic factors contributing to harms, with current emphasis on data-driven responses to the toxic drug crisis.