Heroin In The Heartland: 

Dr. Judith Feinberg has a joint appointment in the WVU School of Medicine as a professor of both Behavioral Medicine & Psychiatry and Medicine/Infectious Diseases. Her current charge is to pursue research on the opioid epidemic in West Virginia and develop a clinical research program both in the WV Clinical and Translational Science Institute and in the Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry. Feinberg has been a leader in HIV/AIDS clinical research for more than 30 years, first at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Health and then as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins and the University of Cincinnati. In 2005, she recognized that opioid injection drug use was an emerging problem in southwest Ohio based on an increase in the number of admissions for a serious heart infection (endocarditis). From her experience at Hopkins in Baltimore, she knew that HIV and viral hepatitis would soon follow without a concerted effort to engage people who inject drugs in harm reduction programs. In 2014, she established Ohio's 3rd syringe exchange, the Cincinnati Exchange Project (CEP), with support from a local foundation. Her research efforts have since switched from the treatment and prevention of HIV to the treatment and prevention of the infectious and medical complications of injection drug use.