Werb also expressed dismay that CoRE had been able to track the Red Deer injection site clients by using their health-care numbers. In 2024, Alberta began requiring injection site clients to provide enough information (name, birth date) to connect to a personal health identifier, something other provinces don’t do. This data was used in the Red Deer study, which, to the authors’ knowledge, made them the first “to assess the effects of (injection site) closure using individual-level, linkable administrative health data.”