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Our Experts
Miriam Komaromy, MD
Medical Director, Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center
Miriam Komaromy, MD is the Medical Director of BMC's Grayken Center for Addiction. Dr. Komaromy was previously a Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of New Mexico. She received her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco and completed her residency in Internal Medicine at UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital. She is Board Certified in Addiction Medicine. Over the course of her career, Dr. Komaromy has provided clinical, research, education, and policy leadership in a variety of settings, including leading the Extension for Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) Institute's programs for addiction and psychiatry and serving on the American Society of Addiction Medicine's National Board of Directors and as medical director for an addiction treatment hospital and for a health center program serving homeless patients. As Associate Director of the ECHO Institute, Dr. Komaromy led national programs focused on expanding addiction and mental health care over the last decade. She developed the first addiction-and psychiatry-focused ECHO program and recently led a federally-funded program that developed and launched five opioid ECHO hubs across the country, including a hub at BMC.
Daniel P Alford, MD
Professor of Medicine
Director, Clinical Addiction Research and Education (CARE) Unit
Director, Safe and Competent Opioid Prescribing Education (SCOPE of Pain) Program Boston University School of Medicine
Daniel Alford is the director of the Clinical Addiction Research and Education (CARE) Unit at BMC and BU School of Medicine (BUSM), professor of medicine at BUSM and director of the Safe and Competent Opioid Prescribing Education (SCOPE of Pain) program at BUSM. His clinical, educational and research interests focus on opioid use disorders and safe and competent opioid prescribing for chronic pain. In 2016, Alford was awarded the Educator of the Year Award by the American Society of Addiction Medicine and was recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House Office of Public Engagement in 2011. Alford is also the recipient of the Nyswander-Dole Award of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence and past-President of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse. Alford is the medical director of the Massachusetts Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment - Training and Technical Assistance (MASBIRT TTA) program. He is also the course director of the BUSM Immersion Training Programs in Addiction Medicine funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
Special Interests: Chronic pain
Dr. Augustyn has worked at BUSM/BMC for over 25 years and joined the faculty initially to work with Deborah Frank in her longitudinal study of the impact of in utero cocaine on child development. For over a decade she was the project pediatrician providing primary and developmental care for the program at BMC. In the last decade as Division Director in DBP she has lead the clinical program which provides diagnostic evaluation and on going care for a wide variety of developmental challenges including fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She is a member of the SOFAR team providing consultation on developmental issues.
Sarah M Bagley, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine
Sarah Bagley is the founder and director of the BMC program for adolescents and young adults with substance use disorders called CATALYST (Center for Addiction Treatment for AdoLescent/Young adults who use SubsTances). She also serves as an attending physician on the Inpatient Addiction Medicine Consult Service team at BMC and is an assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at BUSM. Prior to her appointment at BMC, Bagley trained in a combined internal medicine-pediatrics program at Brown University. Her research focuses on the engagement of adolescent and young adults in substance use disorder treatment and involving family in addiction treatment.
Special Interests: Addiction Medicine
Dr. Joshua Barocas is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center. He is an infectious diseases physician with an expertise in the infectious complications of drug use. His research focus is in clinical decision-making and health policy at the intersection of substance use and infectious diseases. Dr. Barocas earned a BA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2003, an MD from the George Washington University School of Medicine and Public Health in 2010, and completed a residency and Chief Residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Wisconsin before moving to Boston for his fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has worked on issues related to the infectious and non-infectious complications of substance use. Recent projects include estimation of the prevalence of opioid use disorder in Massachusetts, social determinants of non-opioid overdose death, and mathematical modeling to evaluate the clinical impact, costs, and cost effectiveness of integrated substance use treatment and HCV treatment among HIV-infected persons. He is particularly interested in using simulation modeling to understand the long-term impact and cost-effectiveness of healthcare interventions that are designed to improve injection-related infected.
Special Interests: Addiction Medicine
Edward Bernstein, MD
Professor and Vice Chair for Academic Affairs, Emergency Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine
Edward Bernstein is the founder of Project ASSERT, the nation's first Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment program for substance use disorders, and director of the Faster Paths to Treatment program at BMC, which provides urgent access to a continuum of addiction treatment options. Bernstein also serves as a professor of emergency medicine at BUSM and professor of community health sciences for Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH). For the past twenty-five years, Bernstein has pioneered methods to integrate public health into emergency medicine practice and developed and disseminated systems of emergency care that enhance health communications between providers and patients. Bernstein's extensive NIH-sponsored research focuses on the application of motivational interviewing to reduce drug use and sexual risk behavior among emergency department patients with cocaine and heroin abuse, adolescent alcohol and marijuana use and at-risk and dependent alcohol use. He represents the Non-Public Schools of Medicine on the Public Health Council of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health which promulgates rules and regulations, holds public hearings, and approves certain appointments and Determination of Need applications.
Special Interests: Quality improvement; Screening and brief intervention for substance abuse; Public health and emergency medicine; Injury prevention; Toxicology
Natalija Bogdanovic, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine
Natalija Bogdanovic is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and site director for the outpatient child and adolescent psychiatry rotation for the General Psychiatry Residency Program at BMC and an assistant professor of psychiatry at BUSM. She also provides consultation to the BMC CATALYST Clinic for young adults struggling with addiction and coverage for the Boston Emergency Service Team (BEST), a 24-hour emergency services program for people requiring acute psychiatric intervention and providing a comprehensive, highly integrated system of crisis evaluation and treatment services to the greater Boston area. In addition to her work at BMC, she is a Diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in the Specialty of Psychiatry and the Subspecialty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and is fluent in Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian.
Special Interests: Evidence-based psychopharmacology, Evidence-based psychotherapy, Mental Health Consultation to pediatric primary care, Adolescent Addiction/Dual Diagnosis, Expert Second Opinion
Christina P.C. Borba, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor
Director of Research
Department of Psychiatry, Boston Medical Center
Christina P.C. Borba, PhD, MPH is the Director of Research in the Department of Psychiatry and the Director of the Global and Local Center for Mental Health Disparities at Boston Medical Center. She is an Associate Professor at Boston University School of Medicine. As a behavioral scientist who specializes in mixed research methodologies focusing on global mental health, she has extensive research experience that is deeply rooted in contexts of diverse populations. Dr. Borba has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers spanning populations in over ten countries. She is currently the PI of a NIMH research grant, which seeks to understand and respond to the existing 5:1 male-to-female prevalence ratio for schizophrenia in Ethiopia. In addition, she has led research examining factors influencing health-seeking behaviors and disparities in mental health care for women with serious mental illness both domestically and abroad. Dr. Borba’s capacity building work has expanded to other post-conflict and low-resource settings, specifically in western and eastern Africa, where primary care has been identified as a potential point of entry into care for people needing mental health services. She regularly advises and teaches psychiatry residents, research fellows, and public health students about performing global mental health research in resource-limited countries using quantitative and qualitative research methods.
Michael Dawes, MD, is Vice-Chair for Addiction Psychiatry. Dr. Dawes is a graduate of University of North Carolina School of Medicine and has Board certifications in both Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine. He has been recipient of a Mentored Clinical Scientist Development Award from National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) examining developmental trajectories of children of substance-use disordered parents who are at high-risk for developing substance use disorders. Dr. Dawes has have been Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on clinical and prospective cohort studies funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH), examining relationships among impulsivity, substance use disorders, and suicidal behavior in adolescents and adults. He has conducted clinical trials in SUD adolescents and adults. His implementation science foci include improved access to medications that treat Substance Use Disorders, and enhancing engagement in SUD treatment, especially for racial and ethnic minorities. He has experience in mentoring residents and fellows to pursue careers in Addiction Treatment. Dr. Dawes has keen interest in fostering development of the next generation of clinician-researchers who treat addiction and co-occurring mental health disorders.
Eric G Devine, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine
Director, Clinical Studies Unit, Boston University School of Medicine
Eric Devine is the director of the Clinical Studies Unit in the Department of Psychiatry at Boston Medical Center. Dr. Devine serves as Vice-Chair for the Boston Medical Center and Boston University Medical Campus Institutional Review Board, and he is the Director of the IRB Internship training program. He teaches addiction treatment courses for the Mental Health Counseling and Behavioral Medicine Program at Boston University School of Medicine, and also for the BU School of Social Work Professional Education Program. Dr. Devine is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT). He has participated in numerous NIAAA and NIDA-funded multi-site trials testing medications for the treatment of substance use disorders and has had a role in two SAMHSA-funded grants focused on training and dissemination of SBIRT. Dr. Devine also had a role in the development of psychosocial treatments for addiction and has co-authored several treatment manuals and online behavioral platforms for use in multi-site trials testing medications for substance use disorders.
Special Interests: Medication development, clinical trials, psychosocial treatments for substance use disorder, motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioral therapy, universal screening for substance use, ethics of human subjects' research, and manualized treatment approaches for substance use disorders.
Scott E Hadland, MD, MPH, MSc
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine
Scott Hadland is an adolescent medicine and addiction specialist at BMC. Dr. Hadland's clinical and research interests focus on youth substance use and improving care for young people who use heroin and prescription opioids. His work has been published in leading journals, including The Lancet, Pediatrics, JAMA Pediatrics, and Addiction, and was the 2016 recipient of the New Investigator Award from the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Dr. Hadland received his MD degree from Washington University in St. Louis, an MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and an MS in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Hadland completed his pediatrics residency and chief residency at the Boston Combined Residency Program before pursuing fellowship training in Adolescent Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital and completing the Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hadland holds board certification in General Pediatrics, Adolescent Medicine, and Addiction Medicine.
Special Interests: Addiction medicine, LGBTQ health, adolescent health care
Theresa W. Kim, MD is a general internist and addiction medicine specialist at Boston Medical Center. She is a faculty member of the BMC Clinical Addiction Research and Education (CARE) Unit and Assistant Professor in Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Kim's clinical work has focused on providing access to effective yet underutilized care for addictions, HIV/AIDS, and Hepatitis C infection for individuals with housing instability. Her practice at the Boston HealthCare for the Homeless Program has included HIV and shelter-based primary care since 2001. She serves as attending physician for Boston Medical Center's Office-based Addiction Treatment in Primary Care and the Inpatient Addiction Medicine Consult Service. Following tenure as Associate Medical Director of Massachusetts Screening and Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) Program, she joined the faculty of the Boston University Evidence-based SBIRT Student Training Project. She has received NIH funding for her research on models of integrated addiction and medical care and medical complications of substance use including HIV infection and poor bone health.
Special Interests: Internal Medicine, Addiction Medicine, Hepatitis C Treatment, HIV Infection
Simeon Kimmel, MD, MA
Simeon Kimmel is an Internist, Infectious Disease and Addiction medicine physician and health services researcher at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Kimmel’s research focuses on integration of addiction treatment and infectious disease care, including transitions of care following injection drug-associated infections. He attends on the Infectious Diseases and Addiction Medicine consult services, and sees patients in BMC’s HIV clinic as well as the harm reduction focused, street-level drop-in site, Project TRUST.
Colleen T LaBelle, MSN, RN-BC, CARN
Program Director STATE OBAT
Nurse Manager BMC
OBAT Executive Director MA IntNSA
Colleen LaBelle is board certified in addiction nursing, pain management and HIV with over 30 years of clinical experience in HIV and addiction. Labelle is the founder and director of the Office-Based Addiction Treatment program at BMC, also known as the Massachusetts Model, which has been replicated across the country as a nurse-led, primary care-based addiction treatment program. LaBelle also serves as the program director of the State Technical Assistance, Treatment Expansion of Buprenorphine (STATE OBOT B) and serves on the board of nursing appointed by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker. A board director of the International Nurses Addiction Board, she started the MA Chapter for addiction nurses serving as the executive director, with statewide collaboration on workforce development in educating and engaging nurses in addiction. LaBelle was the recipient of the 2016 Lillian Carter Exemplary Acts in Nursing Award, which is given each year by Modern Healthcare in partnership with the Lillian Carter Center for Global Health & Social Responsibility at the Emory University School of Nursing in Atlanta and won the Mayor's Award for Innovations in Primary Care for the integration of opioid treatment in a primary care in 2013.
Marc Larochelle is a general internist and clinical investigator specializing in addiction medicine at BMC and an assistant professor of medicine at BUSM. Larochelle's clinical and research interests focus on the safety of opioid prescribing and the recognition and treatment of opioid use disorders. As a health services researcher, Larochelle aims to leverage insights from large data sources and translate the findings into interventions that improve the quality and value of health care delivered.
Special Interests: Primary Care, Addiction Medicine
Karen Lasser is a general internist and member of the CARE unit at BMC. Lasser is also an associate professor of medicine at BUSM and associate professor of community health sciences at BUSPH. Lasser is a principal investigator of an NIDA-funded trial to determine whether four implementation strategies - nurse care management, use of a patient registry, academic detailing, and electronic tools - will increase primary care provider adherence to chronic opioid therapy guidelines and reduce opioid misuse among patients. Lasser has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers and her work has received international recognition.
Special Interests: Hepatitis C, hypertension, depression, diabetes, smoking cessation
Benjamin P. Linas, MD, MPH
Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Boston University School of Medicine
Director, HCV and HIV core of the Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorders, HCV, and HIV (CHERISH). Director, Health Economics core of the Massachusetts HEALing Communities Study
Benjamin Linas is a clinician scientist dedicated to improving the health of vulnerable persons living with opioid use disorder, HIV, and/or HCV infections. He practices as an HIV and HCV provider at Boston Medical Center infectious diseases practice, providing primary care and sub-specialty management of HIV, HCV, and HIV/HCV co-infected patients, most of whom have opioid use disorder. He is a national leader in comparative-and cost-effectiveness research of HCV and HIV co-infections, aimed at analyzing interventions that identify and treat populations with OUD, HIV and HCV. Dr. Linas works closely with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and also with the World Health Organization (WHO) to identify effective and cost-effective strategies for diagnosing HCV and linking infected individuals to care. He also serves as the Director of the HCV/HIV core of the NIDA-sponsored Center for Health Economics of Interventions for Substance Use Disorder, HCV, and HIV (CHERISH). Additionally, he serves as the Director of the Health Economics core for the Massachusetts HEALing Communities study, sponsored by NIDA and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
Timothy S Naimi, MD, MPH
Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine
Professor of Community Health Sciences at BU School of Public Health
Physician at Boston Medical Center
Timothy Naimi is a clinician-investigator at BMC and an associate professor at the Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. Naimi is an National institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded researcher in the areas of substance abuse epidemiology and alcohol policy. His areas of expertise include binge drinking, youth drinking, health effects of alcohol consumption, and the effects of alcohol control policies on alcohol consumption and alcohol-related mortality. He previously worked as a physician for the U.S. Indian Health Service, and was a senior epidemiologist with the Alcohol Team at the CDC.
Special Interests: internal medicine, pediatrics, preventive medicine, alcohol policy research, alcohol epidemiology
Christine Pace, MD, MSc
Medical Director, Population Health Services, BMC Health System
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine
Christine Pace is a primary care physician at Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Medical Director of Population Health Services for BMC Health System. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, an Internal Medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Boston University Addiction Medicine Fellowship, she has held several leadership roles focused on the design and implementation of programs to improve integration of mental health services and substance use treatment with primary care. In her current role as a Medical Director of Population Health Services, she leads several medical management initiatives within the health system's Medicaid Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), including complex care management, integrated behavioral health, and, with the Grayken Center, improving the quality, efficiency and coordination of care for high risk patients with substance use disorder. Dr. Pace provides primary care and addiction treatment within General Internal Medicine and at the Boston Public Health Commission, and is an attending on the Addiction Consult Service.
Ruth Paris, Ph.D., LICSW
Associate Professor and Chair of Clinical Practice Department, Boston University School of Social Work
Ruth Paris, Ph.D., LICSW is an Associate Professor at Boston University School of Social Work where she serves as the Chair of the Clinical Practice Department. Her program of research focuses on attachment-based interventions for vulnerable families with young children. With support from SAMHSA, DOD, NIH, HRSA and private foundations, she has developed and evaluated multiple interventions implemented in a variety of community settings focused on families at-risk. Dr. Paris’ current and recently completed work includes leading the evaluation of interventions targeting parents with young children affected by trauma and substance misuse. One such intervention, BRIGHT, (Building Resilience through Intervention: Growing Healthier Together) is a therapeutic parenting intervention that has been offered in various substance use treatment programs including family residential treatment and methadone clinics. Dr. Paris is currently testing BRIGHT in a pragmatic randomized controlled trial for pregnant and parenting women with SUD/OUD in a prenatal clinic at Boston Medical Center (RESPECT).
Special interests: Attachment-based interventions for parents and young children; Substance use disorder and parenting; Trauma and early childhood; Maternal and early childhood mental health
Tae Woo "Ted" Park, MD
Addiction Psychiatrist
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine
Tae Park is an addiction psychiatrist at BMC and assistant professor of psychiatry at BUSM. His research focuses on mental health and addiction in primary care settings and the risks of benzodiazepine use in patients taking opioids for pain or addiction. In addition to his work at BMC, Park helped develop the Brown University Addiction Medicine Fellowship, an American Board of Addiction Medicine-accredited addiction fellowship. As the Associate Program Director of the fellowship, he was involved in clinical and didactic teaching of fellows and residents.
Joanna Piechniczek-Buczek is a practicing psychiatrist with expertise in emergency, addiction, and geriatric psychiatry at BMC and the executive vice chair in the department of clinical psychiatry and an assistant professor of psychiatry at BUSM. She has participated in numerous NIAAA and NIDA-sponsored clinical trials in which a wide range of medications were tested as treatments for alcohol and cocaine use disorders. Piechniczek-Buczek's expertise include treating elderly individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance use problems and treating substance use problems in medically compromised patients. She is also a graduate of the prestigious Alcohol Medical Scholars Program.
Special Interests: general adult psychiatry, geriatric psychiatry, addiction psychiatry
John A Renner, Jr., MD
Director, Addiction Psychiatry Residency Training Program
Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine
John Renner Jr. is the director of the Addiction Psychiatry Residency Training Program and associate director of the General Psychiatry Residency Program at BMC and is a professor of psychiatry at BUSM. His research focuses on the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction. In addition to his work at BMC, Renner serves as the Associate Chief of Psychiatry for the VA Boston Healthcare System where he directs their outpatient addiction treatment program. He also serves as the President of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, Vice-Chair of the American Psychiatric Association Council on Addiction Psychiatry, and is a member of the Data Safety Monitoring Board for the Clinical Trials Network of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Clinical Advisory Committee of the Physician Health Service of the Massachusetts Medical Society. He is also former medical director of the SAMHSA funded Physicians Clinical Support System-Buprenorphine.
Special Interests: Buprenorphine (suboxone) treatment
Kelley A Saia, MD
Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Boston University School of Medicine
Director Project RESPECT, Substance Use Disorder Treatment in Pregnancy at Boston Medical Center
Kelley Saia is the director of Project RESPECT (Recovery, Empowerment, Social Services, Prenatal care, Education, Community and Treatment), a high-risk prenatal clinic for pregnant and postpartum women with substance use disorder at Boston Medical Center. Dr. Saia is an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM). She is board certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Addiction Medicine. Dr. Saia is a regional leader and patient advocate in the treatment of substance use disorders in pregnancy and is actively engaged with the Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Abuse Services (BSAS), the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) and the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) in education and outreach programs for the medical community. Dr. Saia was given the Clinical Educator of the Year Award from BUSM in 2016.
Special Interests: High Risk Pregnancy, Substance Use Disorders in Pregnancy, Buprenorphine Treatment, Addiction Medicine
Richard Saitz, MD, MPH
Chairman, Department of Community Health Sciences
Professor of Community Health Sciences and Medicine, Boston University Schools of Public Health and Medicine
Richard Saitz is a general internist and primary care physician specializing in addiction medicine at BMC, professor of medicine at BUSM and chair and professor of community health sciences at BUSPH. In addition to his clinical work, Saitz's research focuses on improving the quality of care for people with unhealthy substance use, particularly in general health settings. He serves as the Senior Editor of Journal of Addiction Medicine, Editor Emeritus of Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, Vice President of the International Society of Addiction Journal Editors (ISAJE) and an editor of The ASAM Principles of Addiction Medicine. Saitz was the recipient of the R. Brinkley Smithers Distinguished Scientist Award, American Society of Addiction Medicine and Distinguished Researcher Award, Research Society on Alcoholism.
Special Interests: Addiction medicine, primary care, risky alcohol and other drug use, integration of addiction and medical care
Jeffrey H Samet, MD, MA, MPH
Vice Chairman for Public Health
Chief, Section of General Internal Medicine
Professor of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine
Professor of Public Health, Boston University School of Public Health
Jeffrey Samet is the chief of general internal medicine at BMC and the John Noble MD Professor in General Internal Medicine at BUSM and Professor of Community Health Sciences at BUSPH. He served as Medical Director of Addictions Prevention, Treatment and Recovery Support Services at the Boston Public Health Commission for 17 years and is the former president of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Samet's research focuses on addressing substance abuse issues in general medicine settings and the impact of alcohol and drug use in HIV-infected persons. He is the Editor of Addiction Science and Clinical Practice and recipient of the John P. McGovern Award for Excellence in Medical Education from the Association of Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse and the Excellence in Mentoring Award, National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Special Interests: Primary Care, Addiction Medicine, HIV
Christopher W. Shanahan MD, MPH, FACP
Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine
Christopher W. Shanahan, MD, MPH, FACP is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and a practicing primary care physician with board certification in both Internal (ABIM) and Addiction Medicine (ABAM). He has over 18 years of experience as a clinician, researcher, clinical innovator, and educator focused on many aspects of substance use disorders as well as ambulatory treatment of chronic pain using safe and evidence-based methods to prescribe opioid medications for its treatment. He is a national core lecturer for Boston University’s SCOPE of PAIN (Safe and Competent Opioid Prescribing Education) program. Dr. Shanahan is the Medical Director for the MCSTAP (Massachusetts Consultation Service for Treatment of Addiction and Pain) program. He has expertise in medical informatics and electronic application design, development and implementation. Leveraging these skill set, Dr, Shanahan has served as a Co-investigator on several research studies incorporating medical informatics as an enabling tool (MASBIRT, TOPCARE, TEACH, RACE) as well as the intervention itself (Hey, Charlie).
Dr. Vincent C. Smith, MD, MPH is Division Chief of Newborn Medicine at Boston Medical Center and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University Medical School. Dr. Smith is a graduate of Texas A&M University, Stanford University School of Medicine, and the Harvard School of Public Health. He trained in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center in the Boston Combined Pediatric Residency Program. He then completed a fellowship in neonatal-perinatal medicine through the Harvard wide program, a collaboration of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Boston Children’s Hospital. He also completed a fellowship in health services research at Children’s Hospital. Dr. Smith serves as the medical director for the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Program. He does a lot of work to raise awareness of the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. In addition to families affected by substance use, his professional interests also include parental NICU discharge readiness and medical care for LGBTQ-headed families.
Sara Stulac is a pediatrician and the co-director of the Supporting Our Families through Addiction and Recovery (SOFAR) program, which provides a pediatric medical home for children and families impacted by substance use disorders. She also works as a pediatrician in the primary care clinic at BMC, and is an associate professor of pediatrics. Prior to her work at BMC, Stulac spent over a decade working in global health in Africa and Haiti.
Jessica Taylor is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the section of General Internal Medicine (GIM) at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, where her clinical work focuses on the care of people with substance use disorders, HIV, and viral hepatitis. She is the Associate Medical Director of FASTER PATHS, Boston Medical Center’s low-barrier substance use disorder bridge clinic, and she provides integrated substance use disorder, primary, and HIV care within GIM and the Center for Infectious Diseases. She is the Medical Director of the General Internal Medicine HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) program, and she has worked to expand pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis access to people who inject drugs. She has been honored for her skills as an educator and currently serves as the Medical Director of the Massachusetts Office-Based Addiction Treatment (OBAT) ECHO, a tele-education series for multidisciplinary teams across Massachusetts. Her research interests include implementation of low-barrier SUD treatment programs, PrEP implementation, HIV prevention among people who inject drugs, infectious complications of injection drug use, and overdose prevention.
Special Interests: HIV, HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), Infectious Complications of Intravenous Drug Use, Opioid Use Disorder
Elisha Wachman, MD
Director, Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Inpatient Quality Improvement and Research
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Elisha Wachman is an attending neonatologist at BMC and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at BUSM. She is the director of the Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) inpatient quality improvement and research teams at BMC. Dr. Wachman is a regional and national leader in NAS research, with on-going projects related to the genetics and epigenetics of NAS, the development of a mouse model of NAS, clinical predictors of NAS outcomes, the use of non-pharmacologic care and novel assessment tools to improve NAS outcomes, and breastfeeding in the setting of substance use disorders. She is one of the co-leaders of the statewide NAS quality improvement collaborative. Dr. Wachman completed her pediatric residency in the Boston Combined Residency program, and her neonatology fellowship at Tufts Medical Center.
Special Interests: Neonatology, Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome
Alexander Y Walley, MD, MSc
Director, Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program
Associate Professor of Medicine
Alexander Walley is the founder of the Inpatient Addiction Medicine Consult Service, associate director of FASTER PATHS and the director of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program at BMC. Walley also serves as an associate professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and is the medical director of the Opioid Overdose Prevention Pilot Program at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Walley's extensive research on the impact of state supported overdose education and nasal naloxone distribution resulted in the nationwide expansion of naloxone among first responders to prevent the rate of opioid-related overdose deaths. Walley's other research endeavors focus on the medical complications of drug use, specifically HIV and overdose, and risk behaviors and harm reduction among HIV-infected people and people with HIV risk behaviors.
In 2005, he founded the buprenorphine treatment program at the Dimock Community Health Center in and has previously served as the medical director of the Boston Public Health Commission methadone maintenance program.
Special Interests: Primary care with a focus on substance use and HIV/AIDS
Zoe Weinstein is the director of the Inpatient Addiction Medicine Consult Service, a general internist at BMC and an assistant professor of medicine at BUSM. Weinstein's research is focused on long-term office-based addiction treatment with buprenorphine and was awarded the Ruth Fox Scholarship by the American Society of Addiction Medicine in 2015.
Special Interests: Primary Care, Substance Use
Huiping Zhang is a researcher studying the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of substance (alcohol or drug) dependence and related psychiatric disorders at BMC. Zhang utilizes a number of approaches to identify gene variants that may influence an individual's predisposition for substance dependence. Zhang joined BMC after completing an academic appointment at Yale University.