Kimball served as a technical and strategic lead for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation infectious disease surveillance strategy formation.
Kimball was then recruited to serve as Regional Advisor for Columbia University's USAID funded program in Operations Research in Family Planning based in Dakar, Senegal.
In 1988 she returned to the US as Regional Advisor for HIV/AIDS and head of National Program Support with the Pan American Health Organization based in Washington DC.
Retiring in 2015 she joined Chatham House as an associate fellow, leading a Rockefeller funded initiative to strengthen post-ebola surveillance in West Africa.
[6] During the early days of the Internet Kimball founded the APEC Emerging Infections Network in 1996,[7] and led research and training programs in Surveillance and Informatics in Peru and Thailand.
Concurrently she negotiated the development of "Menafrinet" a surveillance system for Meningitis across West and Central Africa co-led by national authorities, CDC USA and Medecins Preventif of France.
Her research indicated that Ebola virus disease crisis in West Africa revealed critical weaknesses in health policy and systems in the region, and emphasized the significance of innovative models in terms of enhancing the capabilities of emerging leaders.
[12] In her studies, she also discussed quantitative measurements regarding the impacts of epidemic disease ‘cholera’ on international trade particularly in Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in 1997.
"[19] Núria Torner states that the "book raised interesting questions on infectious diseases and offered new insights into what future challenges may face mankind" and also discussed how it gives a reader "a thorough insight into how our "modern" civilisation, with its so-called globalisation trends, has upset the balance between natural barriers and infection spread.
"[20] Andrew Price-Smith reviewed that the author of the book "provides an excellent critique of health governance at the domestic level within the United States.