Injecting drug use (IDU) accounts for a disproportionately high burden of health and social harm in the community. This Centre for Research Excellence (CRE) will generate new evidence on ways to ameliorate the health and social burden of IDU in Australia and develop tools for translating research into policy and practice. It unites Australia's leading researchers on IDU and related areas - including blood-borne virus (BBV) epidemiology and treatment (particularly hepatitis C), overdose prevention, justice health and psychiatric health - and establishes partnerships with key experts from the non-government sector. The CRE will coordinate diverse databases being produced by independently-funded, innovative, longitudinal research projects conducted by the CRE researchers. It will enhance these studies by adding new data on mental health, imprisonment and BBV status, and embed them within a data linkage framework that will enable a uniquely detailed examination of the health and social consequences of IDU. Data collection will be supplemented by new studies that take advantage of the prospective nature of the data sources underpinning the CRE.