Clinical and Scientific Advisory Council Members
Below are the esteemed members of our Clinical and Scientific Advisory Councils
Konstantin Slavin, MD
Dr. Konstantin Slavin‘s clinical interests are diverse applications of surgical neuromodulation and functional neurosurgery. This includes treatment of pain, movement disorders, epilepsy, and psychiatric diseases with a particular interest in the treatment of facial pain, cancer-related pain, Chiari malformation, stereotactic radiosurgery, brain tumors, and spinal problems. He has received many clinical and professional awards, including "Most Compassionate Doctor," and for many years has been included in the prestigious "Top Surgeons" and "Best Doctors" lists in the USA. Dr. Slavin is a professor of neurosurgery and head of the Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery section at UIC. He is the Past-President of the American Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, and Director-at-Large of the North American Neuromodulation Society and the International Neuromodulation Society. He also serves on Medical Advisory Board of the Facial Pain Association (formerly Trigeminal Neuralgia Association). He has authored and co-authored more than a hundred chapters and peer-reviewed articles, edited three books on Peripheral Nerve Stimulation, and presented at countless educational events and professional conferences. He is now an associate editor of Neuromodulation, Neurosurgery, Surgical Neurology International and a member of editorial boards of several other professional journals. Dr. Slavin’s research interests parallel his clinical expertise and include practical aspects of neuromodulation, a multitude of prospective clinical studies and pioneering research in spinal cord stimulation for cerebral vasospasm, surgical treatment for migraines, and deep brain stimulation for tremor, Parkinson’s disease, and depression.
Theresa Mary Allen, Ph.D., FRCS
Dr. Theresa Mary Allen, Ph.D., FRCS is a Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology and an adjunct professor of Oncology at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is also Co-founder and Strategic Advisor for the Centre for Drug Research & Development, Vancouver, BC and an Adjunct Profession in Biochemistry & Molecular Medicine at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. She has been active in the drug-delivery field for over 30 years and has made important contributions to the development of long-circulating liposomes and ligand-targeted nanomedicines for anticancer drugs and gene medicines.
Dr. Allen has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and is an inventor on several patents. The product Doxil® (Calex® in Europe), the first anticancer nanomedicine approved in the world, came out of pioneering research in her laboratory at the University of Alberta. She has also been active in the area of new drugs from natural products, which has resulted in two drugs proceeding into Phase II clinical trials. Her recent work in developing ligand-targeted therapeutics for small molecule therapeutics and gene medicines is at the leading edge of this exciting new field and the methods she developed are widely used throughout the field.
Dr. Allen received her R.T. in Medical Technology in 1961 from Ottawa General Hospital and then went on to earn her Bachelor of Science degree with Honours in Biochemistry in 1964 at the University of Ottawa. Continuing her education, she received her Ph.D. in Oceanography in 1971 from Dalhousie University.
Dr. Allen is a founding member and strategic advisor of the Centre for Drug Research & Development (www.cdrd.ca), which is a novel hybrid organization devoted to advancing promising medical discoveries from academia to a commercially attractive stage. The Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) evolved from the recognition by the Founders of the pressing need to improve the translation of medical discoveries made in the universities and teaching hospitals into new drugs and technologies that result in economic and health benefits for Canada. CDRD takes a unified, coherent approach to identifying, advancing, and commercializing innovative life science discoveries via a unique structure that connects scientists, health care providers, and industry.
Dr. Allen has been active throughout her career in mentoring graduate students, summer students, and technologists. Her former graduate students occupy senior positions in academia and industry throughout the world. She has also been a popular classroom teacher in courses in Pharmacology and Pharmacy.
She is a member of a number of editorial boards in the field of drug delivery and drug targeting and is active on national and international grant panels and advisory boards, including the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the European Commission, the Austrian Space Agency, the Federal Drug Agency, USA and the Canadian Cancer Society. She is frequently an invited speaker at national and international conferences, at universities and at biotechnology companies and at major pharmaceutical companies. Her prominence in the field is attested to by the number of national and international awards that she has received.
Francis P. Arena, M.D., F.A.C.P.
Dr. Arena received his Bachelor of Science Degree from Fordham University and his Medical Degree from Cornell University Medical College. His internship and residency were carried out at New York Hospital/Memorial Hospital, after which Dr. Arena served as Chief Medical Resident and later as Hematology/Oncology Fellow at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and in Medical Oncology. Today Dr. Arena is Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at New York University and Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at Cornell University Medical College. He holds appointments and North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, North Shore University Hospital in Glen Cove and The Long Island Jewish Medical Center.
Because of his keen interest in cancer research, Dr. Arena helped establish the SASS Foundation for Medical Research, which supports medical fellows at a number of hospitals. He is on the Advisory Board of "1 in 9", the Breast Cancer Coalition, and serves as a consultant for numerous pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Arena is widely published and has lectured extensively in his field. He is an Assistant Editor of the journal Oncology and he is also on the Editorial Board of the Community Oncology Journal. Dr. Arena is also a 2006 recipient of the David Award and was listed as one of the “Top Doctors” in 2007.
Kenny Chantasi, DO
Dr. Chantasi is Board Certified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Pain Medicine and currently practices at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. His areas of clinical interest are pain medicine, chronic pain management, spasticity management with Botox and intrathecal baclofen, and medical manipulation.
He attended the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine where he was awarded his Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine. Dr. Chantasi received his undergraduate degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University, achieving his Bachelor of Science Degree in Biochemistry. He completed his residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Nassau University Medical Center, and also completed his Internship at Nassau University Medical Center.
Dr. Chantasi has co-authored various publications.
Martin Cheatle, Ph.D.
Dr. Cheatle serves as the Director for the Pain and Chemical Dependence Research Program at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Center for Studies of Addiction in the Department of Psychiatry.
Dr. Cheatle received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and holds a B.A. degree from California State University, Long Beach in Psychology. He interned at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and served as an NIH Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry.
Dr. Cheatle’s core clinical expertise lies in assessing and managing chronic pain from a biopsychosocial perspective and he has extensive research expertise in chronic pain and substance use disorders and depression and suicidal ideation in patients with chronic pain.
Leonard A. Farber, M.D.
Leonard A. Farber, M.D. is a Board Certified Radiation Oncologist and the Director of Radiation Medicine and Oncology at NYC Surgical Associates. After receiving his B.S. and B.A. at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Dr. Farber pursued his M.D. at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Following an internship in internal medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, he completed a residency in Radiation Oncology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he served as Chief Resident. Prior to embarking on The Farber Center for Radiation Oncology, Dr. Farber Served as Chairman of Radiation Oncology at Staten Island University Hospital, of the NSUH/LIJ Health System.
Dr. Farber’s published writings and lectures have focused on SBRT for prostate cancer, HDR brachytherapy, pancreatic and bile duct cancers, head and neck cancer, breast cancer, Positron Emission Therapy (PET), and cardiovascular radiation. He has served as principal investigator on many clinical trials and has been on the forefront of the HDR treatment for various types of malignant and benign conditions and SBRT for various malignancies and sites. He is a member of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, the American College of Radiation Oncology, the American Brachytherapy Society, the International Society of Gastrointestinal Oncology, the New York Cancer Society, the New York Metropolitan Breast Cancer Group, and several others. He now serves as Chief Medical Officer for Woodmont Pharmaceuitcals, Inc., with clinical trials focusing on allergy immunotherapy. He is on the scientific advisory board for several organizations.
Dr. Farber specializes in adult radiation oncology, with particular focus on cancers of the prostate, breast, lung, skin, and gastrointestinal, and gynecologic malignancies. He has special interest in High Dose Rate (HDR) brachytherapy for various types of cancers, including breast, skin, and gynecologic malignancies, and intracranial and stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT). He and his center were the first and only facility in Manhattan to introduce a 5-day hypo fractionated SBRT program for prostate cancer treatment. He has implemented volumetric arc therapy (VMAT) in the treatment of benign parotid enlargement/hypertrophy, a disfiguring condition affecting a variety of patients, especially within the HIV+ community. Most recently he has been involved with the utilization of SBRT with immunotherapy in the setting of metastatic disease.
Dr. Leonard A. Farber, M.D. was formerly with the Division of Radiation Oncology at Weill Cornell Medical College as Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology and Clinical Director of Radiation Oncology at New York Presbyterian, Lower Manhattan Cancer Center, 21 West Broadway. This location has served as the first and only freestanding state-of-the-art radiation oncology center of its kind in Manhattan. In addition to having the only Elekta Infinity Linac for external beam radiation oncology and the only Nucletron Flexitron HDR brachytherapy system, the center offers an integrative approach to radiation therapy in a soothing and comfortable healing environment.
Perry G. Fine, MD
Perry G. Fine, MD, completed medical school in 1981 at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. He served an internship in 1982 at the Community Hospital of Sonoma County in Santa Rosa, California, and completed his residency in 1984 at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center in Salt Lake City. In addition, Dr. Fine completed a fellowship in 1985 at the Smythe Pain Clinic of the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Fine is a Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology of the School of Medicine at the University of Utah, where he serves on the faculty in the Pain Research Center, and is an attending physician in the Pain Management Center. Dr. Fine is the Strategic Advisor for Capital Caring, Washington, DC, developing sustainable models of advanced illness-coordinated care in community settings, as an integrative component of comprehensive advanced illness care. He is Past President of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, and represents the Academy on the Steering Committee of the Pain Care Coalition, Washington, DC. He serves on the Clinical Models Committee of the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC). He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Magellan Health, a large healthcare management company, focusing on behavioral health and improving health outcomes in special and vulnerable populations and he serves on the Board of Directors of the Anne Stirba Cancer Foundation, whose sole focus is to raise funds to support research that will lead to the eradication of breast cancer.
Dr. Fine is widely published in the fields of pain management and end-of-life care. He serves on several scientific advisory boards and the editorial boards of several peer-reviewed medical journals, including Pain Medicine and the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. As a medical avocation, he worked as a team physician for the University of Utah football team for 18 years and was a medical officer for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Dr. Fine has received numerous awards and, in 2012, the Perry G. Fine, MD Endowed Fund in Pain and Palliative Medicine was created at West Virginia University by Hospice Care Inc. to honor his contributions to the fields of pain and palliative care and ensure ongoing continuing health professionals’ education in these essential domains.
Michael S. Gold, Ph.D.
Michael S. Gold, Ph.D., is a Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Gold received his B.A. from UC Berkeley, Ph.D. from UCLA, and was postdoctoral fellow with Jon Levine at USCF. For the last twenty years, Gold’s research focused on the neurobiology of pain. He has made important contributions to injury-induced plasticity in nociceptive afferents, and their contribution to the manifestation of persistent pain. Toward this end, he has employed an array of approaches ranging from the study of isolated cells to the development of novel behavioral assays with which to assess the presence of persistent hypersensitivity, and more recently the study of clinical populations suffering from persistent pain. Dr. Gold is actively involved in the greater pain community where he is a Member of Council for the International Association for the Study of Pain, and was the Chair of the Scientific Program Committee for the 2017 meeting of American Pain Society. He is on the executive committee of the North American Pain School. Dr. Gold received the F.W.L. Kerr award for basic science research in 2016.
Douglas L. Gourlay, MD, MSc, FRCPC, FASAM
Dr. Douglas L. Gourlay did his medical training at McMaster University, completing his fellowship in anesthesiology in 1990. Following a fellowship in addiction medicine, he has focused his practice on the assessment and management of risk in the treatment of chronic pain.
He has written extensively and speaks on the topic of patient-centered strategies in the management of risk.
He is the former Director, Pain and Chemical Dependency Division, Wasser Pain Management Centre, Toronto as well as the Director of Lab Services, Center for Addition and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario.
He currently is an educational consultant, writing and speaking on the subjects of Risk Management and Drug Testing.
Yun Guan, M.D.
Dr. Yun Guan is an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His multidisciplinary research focuses on mechanisms of chronic pain and developing better strategies and novel targets for treatment of pathological pain conditions.
His team is currently engaged in research that studies the neurobiological mechanisms of pain and hyperalgesia after tissue or nerve injury.
Dr. Guan earned his M.D. from Capital Medical University in Beijing, China. Following that, he completed an M.S. in neurophysiology at Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Maryland. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Guan joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2006.
He is a member of the Society for Neuroscience, the American Pain Society (APS), the International Association for the Study of Pain and the North American Neuromodulation Society.
Dr. Guan serves on the editorial board of Analgesia & Resuscitation: Current Research. His work has been recognized with numerous awards, most recently Gold Medal award of the 13th, 14th and 15th ACCM Research Day at Johns Hopkins University.
Sabu Kumar James, MBBS DipNB MRCA FCA(I) AFFPMRCA
Dr. Sabu James is Lead Clinician and Lead Consultant at Chronic Pain Services, National Health Services, Lanarkshire, Central Scotland.
Clinical interests include the genetics of pain, including the genetics of chronic post-surgical pain, pain education in Primary care.
I have published widely on the subjects of ‘Pain Genetics’ in peer-reviewed journals.
Joseph Pergolizzi, MD
Patients, practitioners, philanthropists, and investors regularly seek out the expertise of Dr. Joseph Pergolizzi. His in-depth and expansive knowledge of the multiplicity of issues confronting patients and caregivers in acute and chronic pain has made him a valuable partner, advisor, and contributor to the healthcare system, business, academia, and government entities. Whether as physician, inventor, research scientist, or advocate for pain patients, Dr. Pergolizzi works on the leading edge of medicine.
An internationally renowned perioperative and pain specialist, Dr. Pergolizzi offers personalized medical services through an innovative practice that provides enhanced care and direct access to some of the world’s top medical experts and centers. In clinical practice, he combines the latest medical advances and scientific breakthroughs with his profound professional compassion for patients facing life-altering painful conditions.
Dr. Pergolizzi specializes in clinical research, consulting with major research institutions and drug developers around the globe. His scientific knowledge combines with his frontline understanding of the current limitations in pain medicine so that he can meaningfully contribute to innovative new analgesic products and approaches. He has devoted his professional life to reducing the suffering associated with under-treated and untreated painful conditions.
Dr. Pergolizzi’s innovative achievements have focused on an array of complex matters including but not limited to genetic differences in analgesic drug metabolism that can result in clinical relevant pharmacokinetic drug to drug interactions and their subsequent impact on healthcare economics and outcome measures; policy issues related to safe and appropriate use of opioid analgesics through the development of sophisticated physio-chemistry based abuse deterrent technologies; and advancing integrative medicine techniques to create novel natural/synthetic combinations products like OxyRub™ to address patients desires for vetted complementary and alternative products.
Dr. Joseph Pergolizzi has held various positons at prestigious academic medical institutions. He has served as a committee member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Safe Use Initiative and a Special Government Employee for the Veterans Health Administration.
Dr. Pergolizzi is the author of over 150 peer-reviewed articles, abstracts, platform presentations, and book chapters in his areas of interest and expertise. He is an internationally recognized expert in clinical research, pain medicine, anesthesia, internal medicine, pharmacology, regulatory affairs, and drug discovery. He has been awarded the American Medical Association Physician Recognition Award with Commendation and is a member of the Who’s Who for International Executives. He has served as a member of advisory boards and medical/scientific societies, and has acted on a number of institutional committees including the Medical Errors Committee and Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee. Dr. Pergolizzi is recognized by his peers as a scientific and medical expert who integrates new products, techniques, and technologies into everyday clinical practice.
Theodore (Ted) Price, Ph.D.
Dr. Theodore (Ted) Price is the Director of the Undergraduate Neuroscience Program in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences in Dallas, Texas. In 2007, Dr. Price began his independent laboratory in the Department of Pharmacology at the University Of Arizona School Of Medicine. While there, he obtained funding from The Rita Allen Foundation and The National Institutes of Health to study diverse projects aimed at understanding molecular mechanisms that cause pain to become chronic.
His lab continues to be interested in molecular mechanisms driving the transition to chronic pain with an increasing focus on drug development for chronic pain disease modification.
Dr. Price received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Neuroscience at The University of Texas at Dallas in 1997 and then his Ph.D. from the University of Texas Health, San Antonio (UTHSCSA) in 2003, where he worked on mechanisms of cannabinoid analgesia with Ken Hargreaves. He then went on to McGill University where he was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Fernando Cervero from 2004 to 2007. At McGill, he worked on mechanisms of spinal pain amplification and developed an independent line of investigation on local translation control in nociceptors and a mechanism for rapid deployment of new gene expression to alter excitability.
He has won numerous awards and serves on editorial boards for leading pain and neuroscience journals and is a standing member of the Somatosensory and Chemosensory Study Section for the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Lisa Jo Stearns, MD
Dr. Lisa Stearns, founder and medical director of Center for Pain and Supportive Care, is a leading expert in interventional therapy for cancer pain and is internationally renowned for her research and expertise with intrathecal pumps. Dr. Stearns is committed to educating patients and healthcare professionals about the most effective pain management and supportive care techniques. Upon receiving her medical degree from the University of Nebraska in 1991 and completing her residency in anesthesiology and her fellowship in pain management, Dr. Stearns became one of only a handful of interventional pain specialists to focus her practice on palliative medicine.
In 2007 when Dr. Stearns founded Center for Pain and Supportive Care (CPSC) in Phoenix Arizona, she set out to tackle what she saw as fragmented and narrow care for patients with chronic pain. Dr. Stearns has diligently worked to create a diverse team of providers, including specialists in cancer-related and chronic pain, supportive care, advanced therapies, interventional pain management, yoga rehabilitation, and medication management, among others. She has sought out talented clinicians whose values naturally follow CPSC‘s mission of restoring a patient’s life by providing the most advanced pain management treatments through a whole-person approach to care.
Dr. Stearns has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles on pain management and palliative care and is actively involved in research at both the early development and late clinical trial stages. She is frequently a featured speaker at national and international conferences in her field; she has an adjunct faculty appointment at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine where she trains pain management and palliative fellows and preceptor for Midwestern University medical students and allied health professionals. In all her work, Dr. Stearns seeks to raise awareness that pain management can "build a bridge back to life."
After watching both of her grandmothers pass away from cancer, Dr. Stearns has experienced first-hand that many chronic pain and cancer patients do not receive the proper care they need and often feel neglected throughout the treatment process. Dr. Stearns has made it her life’s work to improve her patients’ function and overall quality of life, caring not only for her patients but their families and caregivers as well. Her practice is unique in that she treats the whole person by teaching them how to build healthy behaviors in all aspects of their lives: physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological.
Dr. Stearns founded the Valley Cancer Pain Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated solely to cancer pain research, to raise awareness and to educate families, patients and providers on integrating interventional pain treatments. She is also a co-founder and executive committee member of the Cancer Pain Research Consortium, a group of doctors from across the world working to find the latest and best treatments for cancer-related pain.
Andrea Trescot, MD
Dr. Andrea Trescot is a board certified Interventional Pain Physician and Director of the Pain and Headache Center, in Eagle River, Alaska.
Dr. Trescot is the Past President of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians. Her distinguished resume includes Directorship of Pain Fellowships at the University of Washington School Of Medicine in Seattle and at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Previous to those world-renowned leadership roles, Dr. Trescot practiced for 10 years as an Interventional Pain Physician in Orange Park, Florida (a suburb of Jacksonville). She graduated from the University of Florida with a BS (honors) in zoology. Having finished college in 3 years, she worked as a laboratory technician for a year before starting medical school at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. After graduating from medical school, she started her military career as an intern and resident at the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda in the department of anesthesia. After a fellowship in pediatric anesthesia at the National Children’s Hospital in Washington, she was stationed at the Naval Hospital in Jacksonville, FL.
Dr. Trescot has authored various publications on the field of Interventional Pain Management, including co-authoring the acclaimed "Pain-Wise, a Patients Guide to Pain Management". Most recently, she authored a 900 page textbook, “Peripheral Nerve Entrapments”.
Tor Wager, Ph.D.
Dr. Wager is the director of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience laboratory at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in cognitive psychology, with a focus in cognitive neuroscience, in 2003. He joined the faculty of Columbia University as an Assistant Professor of Psychology in 2004, and was appointed Associate Professor in 2009. In 2010, he joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on how expectations shape responses to pain and emotional cues in the brain and body. Peer-reviewed publications include work on brain mechanisms of placebo analgesia and the cognitive regulation of emotion and attention.
The mission of our lab is to investigate the brain pathways that underlie the generation and regulation of pain and emotion. One line of work concerns how cognitive and motivational factors influence the way in which painful stimuli and other aversive events are processed in the brain and body. Two related lines of work involve developing biomarkers for pain and emotion, and studying the roles of conceptual knowledge and learning in pain perception and avoidance behavior. A fourth line of work investigates the cortical-subcortical circuits involved in social evaluative threat. Recent and ongoing studies combine measurements of emotional behavior and self-report, brain activity (measured with fMRI, or, less frequently PET or EEG), and peripheral physiology, including measures of autonomic and endocrine activity. Our lab has a particular emphasis on developing and using new analysis methods to gain a clearer picture systems-level interactions among brain regions. We are also engaged in collaborative, translational research incorporative brain systems-level analysis into the study of clinical disorders, including PTSD, depression, schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder.
Sheffer Tseng, M.D.
Dr. Tseng serves as Medical Director of Ocular Surface Center, providing the state-of-art Clinical Services to patients suffering from a variety of ocular surface and tear disorders.
Dr. Tseng serves as Research Director of Ocular Surface Foundation, educating and training research fellows who are to be specialized in ocular surface biology, health, and diseases.
Dr. Tseng serves as Chief Technology Officer of TissueTech, Inc., supervising a variety of Research Programs directed to study the pathogenesis of ocular surface and tear diseases, and develop new tools and products for improving the diagnosis and treatment of these diseases.
Robert J. Valuck, PhD, RPh, FNAP
Dr. Valuck is a Professor in the Departments of Clinical Pharmacy, Epidemiology, and Family Medicine at the University of Colorado Schools of Pharmacy, Public Health, and Medicine at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.
Dr. Valuck received his B.S. in Pharmacy from the University of Colorado (in 1987), and his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Pharmacy (in 1992 and 1994) from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Dr. Valuck is Director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research (CePOR) at the School of Pharmacy and has published widely on topics of drug safety and comparative effectiveness. He is also Director of the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention, a regional and national model for the development of collaborative, coordinated responses to the opioid overdose epidemic in the United States.
Brent Van Dorsten, Ph.D.
Dr. Brent Van Dorsten is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in health psychology and behavioral medicine assessment and treatment at the Colorado Center for Behavioral Medicine. At the CCBM, Dr. Van Dorsten provides cognitive-behavioral assessments and treatments to a diverse patient population referred by physician specialists in Anesthesiology Pain Medicine, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Orthopedic/Spine, Primary Care, Neurology, and OBGYN among others. This clinical service includes assessment and treatment for pain and functional limitations, physical injury and delayed recovery, assisting physicians in the management of patients on long-term opioids, and pre-surgical behavioral assessments for patients being considered for spine surgeries, implantable spinal cord stimulators, and medication pumps.
Prior to opening the Colorado Center for Behavioral Medicine in 2012, Dr. Van Dorsten was an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in the Departments of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Orthopedics/Spine Center, and Anesthesiology Pain Medicine for over 23 years. He is certified with a variety of national credentialing services including the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology and is a Life Fellow of both the Society of Behavioral Medicine and the American College of Forensic Examiners. He currently holds or has recently held Executive Board committee positions with the American Psychological Association, the Society of Behavioral Medicine, Association of Psychologists in Academic Health Centers and the American Board of Psychology Specialties. Most recently, Dr. Van Dorsten has been elected as President-Elect for the Colorado Pain Society. Dr. Van Dorsten was the founder and Director of the Behavioral Medicine Fellowship Program in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Anesthesiology Pain from 1996-2000, and is a former Co-Director of the Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy/Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Program. He is broadly experienced in forensic psychology as it relates to traumatic injury and personal injury litigation and has been admitted in both state and federal courts as an expert witness in pain and rehabilitation psychology, and psychosocial and behavioral factors affecting recovery from personal injury and chronic illness. Dr. Van Dorsten has published numbers of articles and book chapters on pain, diabetes, and traumatic medical injury, and his book Forensic Psychology: From Classroom to Courtroom has gained vast popularity in the forensic psychology and medicine arenas.
In addition to clinical duties, Dr. Van Dorsten is contracted investigator for several current NIH studies and also currently serves as the Chair of the Behavioral Investigator core for a National Institutes of Health multi-year, multi-center investigation involving intensive lifestyle interventions in adults with overweight/obesity, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Van Dorsten has delivered multiple national and international presentations regarding the application of behavioral sciences in medicine and rehabilitation, behavioral pain management, patient selection for invasive medical procedures, psychometric testing of medical patients, managing patients on long-term opioid medications, developing and implementing behavioral care in medical services, factors affecting delayed recovery and return to work, traumatic medical injury, chronic illness (diabetes/ obesity), and forensic psychology. He has presented multiple national continuing education workshops on pain assessment and treatment to multi-disciplinary audiences nationwide each year, and has gained wide professional acclaim for his ability to analyze common patient management challenges into practical treatment solutions.
Lynn R. Webster, MD, FACPM, FASAM
Lynn R Webster, MD, FACPM, FASAM, is Cofounder and Medical Director of Lifetree Clinical Research and Pain Clinic in Salt Lake City, UT and Co-founder of LifeSource, a non-profit foundation established in 2006 to educate physicians, patients, and communities on health issues, as well as fund and conduct research that will discover new solutions and hope for improved life. He earned his medical degree in 1976 from the University of Nebraska and, in 1980, completed his residency in anesthesiology at the University of Utah Medical Center. He is board certified in pain medicine and addiction medicine and has added qualifications in pain medicine from the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Currently, he is on the board of directors for the American Academy of Pain Medicine and was instrumental in launching the Utah chapter of the organization. He lectures extensively on the subject of preventing opioid abuse and criminal diversion in chronic pain patients and has written more than 100 scientific abstracts and journal articles. He recently published a book entitled Avoiding Opioid Abuse While Managing Pain: A Guide for Practitioners. Additionally, he is a co-editor of Pain Medicine’s section on opioids, substance abuse, and addiction, and serves as a reviewer for numerous peer reviewed journals.
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