Conference Planning Committee

Ingeborg Schafhalter-Zoppoth, MD, Conference, Chair
Anna Lembke, MD, Conference Vice-Chair
Sharone Ann Abramowitz, MD
Anthony P. Albanese, MD
William S. Brostoff, MD
Caroline Corriveau, MD
Smita Das, MD, PhD, MPH
Py Louise Driscoll, MD
Dana Harris, MD
Chinyere Ogbonna, MD, MPH
Amer Raheemullah, MD
Ricardo Restrepo, MD, MPH
Scott Steiger, MD
Lello Tesema, MD
Tauheed Zaman, MD

Conference Speakers

Sharone Abramowitz, MD, FASAM
Dr. Abramowitz is ABAM certified & completed her psychiatry training at UCSF, where she won an award for "exceptional psychotherapeutic skill and unusual concern for the welfare of patients". She has an integrative mental health practice in SF & Oakland. She is the founder of AbramowitzHealthyCommunicating.com and, since becoming an MI trainer in 2002, has trained numerous health organizations. After being on a primary care medicine residency faculty for over 25 years, she is now a faculty member and a 2nd year fellow of an integrative medicine fellowship. She chairs CSAM's Integration and Access to Systems of Care Committee, and has chaired and co-chaired past CSAM conferences.

Anthony Albanese, MD, FASAM
Dr. Albanese is an Affiliations Officer with the VA Office of Academic Affiliations and Clinical Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at the UC Davis School of Medicine. He was the 2012 Review Course Chairman and is now on the CSAM Executive Council and ASAM Board of Directors. He has been practicing Addiction Medicine and Hepatology for the past 25 years in a variety of settings including methadone clinic, private practice, full service treatment facilities, academic centers and impaired professional programs.

Daniel P.. Alford, MD, MPH, FACP, DFASAM
Daniel P. Alford, MD, MPH is Professor of Medicine, Assistant Dean of Continuing Medical Education and Director of the Safe and Competent Opioid Prescribing Education (SCOPE of Pain) program at Boston University School of Medicine. He is on staff in the Section of General Internal Medicine and Director of the Clinical Addiction Research and Education (CARE) Unit at Boston Medical Center. He is past-president of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA). In 2011 he was recognized as a “Champion of Change” by the White House. In 2014 he received the AMA “Award for Health Education” and his SCOPE of Pain program was presented with an “Outstanding Prevention Effort Award” by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In 2016 he was awarded the American Society of Addiction Medicine first “Educator of the Year Award” and the American College of Physicians “Award for Distinguished Contributions to Behavioral Medicine”. His clinical, educational and research interests focus on opioid use disorders and safe and competent opioid prescribing for chronic pain.

Seth Ammerman, MD
Seth Ammerman, M.D., FAAP, FSAHM, DABAM, is a Clinical Professor in pediatrics and adolescent medicine at Stanford University. Dr. Ammerman is the founder and medical director of the Teen Health Van, a mobile clinic program providing comprehensive primary health care services to homeless, uninsured, and underinsured youth. Dr. Ammerman’s research interests include tobacco and substance use in adolescents; at-risk youth; eating disorders; and use of mobile technology for improving adolescent health. Dr. Ammerman is a Fellow both of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM). He is chair of the northern California chapter of the AAP Substance Abuse Committee, and a former member of the national AAP Committee on Substance Use and Prevention (COSUP). He is a member of the medical honors society Alpha Omega Alpha. In 2012 Dr. Ammerman received a Silicon Valley Business Journal Health Care Heroes award. He also received the national AAP Founders Award in 2012 for his work in community adolescent health. In 2014 Dr. Ammerman received a Bay Area Jefferson Award for Public Service, and in 2015 received a further honor of a Jefferson Award Silver Medal. In October 2015 Dr. Ammerman became Board Certified in Addiction Medicine.

Michael Botticelli, BS. MEd
Michael Botticelli is the Executive Director of the Grayken Center for Addiction Medicine at Boston Medical Center and a Distinguished Policy Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to this, Michael was the Director of National Drug Control Policy for the Obama Administration. He joined the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) as Deputy Director in November 2012 and later served as Acting Director. Mr. Botticelli has more than two decades of experience supporting Americans affected by substance use disorders. Prior to joining ONDCP, he served as Director of the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, where he successfully expanded innovative and nationally recognized prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery services for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He also forged strong partnerships with local, state, and Federal law enforcement agencies; state and local health and human service agencies; and stakeholder groups to guide and implement evidence-based programs. Mr. Botticelli holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Siena College and a Master of Education degree from St. Lawrence University. He is also in long-term recovery from a substance use disorder, celebrating more than 28 years of recovery.

Lei Choi, MD, MPH
Dr. Lei Choi joined UCSF Health in 2015. She is the Medical Director of the Lean Transformation Office and a practicing physician in the UCSF Division of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Choi graduated from Princeton University in 1992 and received an M.D degree from Duke University School of Medicine. She completed an Internal Medicine residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and earned a Master of Public Health degree, with distinction, from Tufts Medical Center. While at Tufts Medical Center, Dr. Choi served as the Acting Chief of the Division of General Medicine and the Director of the Adult Asian Health Initiative. In these positions, she actively engaged in the optimization of healthcare access for the Boston Asian immigrant community. In 2004, Dr. Choi relocated to San Francisco with her family, and built a thriving primary care practice in Pacific Heights. She joined the core internal medicine teaching faculty at Sutter Health California Pacific Medical Center, and launched a residency-wide curriculum for patient safety and quality improvement. This work directly increased resident and fellow engagement in clinical and operational initiatives throughout the organization. Dr. Choi was appointed Director for the Lean Healthcare across the Sutter Health San Francisco campuses in 2013. Over the course of two years, she played a critical role in the successful adoption of a comprehensive Lean system throughout the Bay Area for Sutter Health. In 2015, Dr. Choi joined the faculty at UCSF Health as the Medical Director of the Lean Transformation Office. She is dedicated to coaching Lean leader behaviors, empowering innovative problem solvers throughout the organization, and advancing the delivery of highly reliable patient-centered care.

Smita Das, MD, PhD, MPH
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area (San Jose), Smita studied Chemistry and Statistics at Stanford, completed her Masters in Public Health at Dartmouth College, and then completed her MD and PhD in Community Health at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She completed residency and was chief resident at Stanford and completed an addiction psychiatry fellowship at UCSF. Throughout her training, she accumulated over a 15 years of experience, starting in the year 2000, with C. Barr Taylor, MD, in studying smoking cessation methods/dissemination for hospital inpatients as well as JCAHO hospital quality measures. Currently Smita's research areas of interest are addiction-behavior, community outreach, hospital quality and development/implementation of behavioral interventions in public health with her mentor since 2013, Judith Prochaska, PhD, MPH. Projects now focus on smoking, e-cigarettes, addiction and mental illness in disadvantaged youth and families. She has published several peer reviewed articles (for example in JAMA Psychiatry, Psychiatric Services and FOCUS Psychiatry) and has authored several book chapters. She presents her research at national conferences regularly. Smita has received several prestigious fellowships and awards including the ASAM Young Investigator Award, SAMHSA/APA Substance Abuse Fellowship, Ruth Fox Scholarship, American Society of Addiction Medicine, George Ginsberg MD Fellowship, Association of Women Psychiatrists Leadership Fellowship, APA Resident Recognition Award and American Psychiatric Leadership Fellowship. She was Elected Secretary of the Northern California Psychiatric Society since May 2015 and appointed to 3 year term on APA Addiction Council then as well. She hopes to continue in academic medicine as an addiction psychiatrist and be involved in health services research, policy and advocacy. She is Director of Addiction Treatment Services at the Palo Alto VA.

Steven J.. Eickelberg, MD, DFASAM, FAPA
Dr. Steven J. Eickelberg is an addiction psychiatrist who serves as the Chief Medical Officer for Sierra Tucson. He is a graduate of Oregon Health & Science University and received training at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center. Dr. Eickelberg is a diplomat of both the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the American Board of Addiction Medicine, and he is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine.Over the past 30 years, he has worked in a wide variety of clinical and educational settings, including Kaiser Permanente, Loma Linda University School of Medicine, consultant to Major League Baseball, consultant to the FAA, providing assessments and monitoring for the FAA and aviation professionals, Medical Director of the Betty Ford Center, and he was co-director of two addiction medicine fellowship programs (Loma Linda University School of Medicine-Kaiser Permanente combined program and the Betty Ford Center). Dr. Eickelberg has served on the Executive Council of the California Society of Addiction Medicine (CSAM) since 1995, the MERF Board of Directors since 1999, and has been the President of MERF since 2002. In 2014 CSAM presented Dr. Eickelberg with the Vernelle Fox Award.

Keith Humphreys, PhD
Keith Humphreys is a Professor and the Section Director for Mental Health Policy in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Research Career Scientist at the VA Health Services Research Center in Palo Alto and an Honorary Professor of Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London. His research addresses the prevention and treatment of addictive disorders, the formation of public policy and the extent to which subjects in medical research differ from patients seen in everyday clinical practice. For his work in the multinational humanitarian effort to rebuild the psychiatric care system of Iraq and in the national redesign of the VA health system's mental health services for Iraq war veterans, he won the 2009 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Public Interest. He and the authors of "Drug Policy and the Public Good" won the 2010 British Medical Association's Award for Public Health Book of the Year. Dr. Humphreys has been extensively involved in the formation of public policy, having served as a member of the White House Commission on Drug Free Communities, the VA National Mental Health Task Force, and the National Advisory Council of the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. During the Obama Administration, he spent a sabbatical year as Senior Policy Advisor at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. He has also testified on numerous occasions in Parliament and advises multiple government agencies in the U.K. He is also a regular contributor to the Washington Post Wonkblog, where he writes about addiction, mental health, drug policy and the criminal justice system.

David Kan, MD
Dr. David Kan is Medical Director of Bright Heart Health, the first of its kind addiction telehealth treatment program. Dr. Kan is also a psychiatrist in private practice in addiction, forensic and general psychiatry. Dr. Kan is the President-Elect of CSAM and the chair of the opioid committee. Dr. Kan has served CSAM as a member of the Executive Council since 2011 and has written numerous documents affecting physician practice. He has helped insurance companies drop prior authorization requirements for Medication Assisted Treatment. He is active in political advocacy on behalf of all of our patients.

George Koob, PhD
George F. Koob, is Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) as of January 27, 2014. As NIAAA Director, Dr. Koob oversees a wide range of alcohol-related research, including genetics, neuroscience, epidemiology, prevention, and treatment. As an authority on alcoholism, drug addiction and stress, he has contributed to our understanding of the neurocircuitry associated with the acute reinforcing effects of alcohol and drugs of abuse and the neuroadaptations of the reward and stress circuits associated with the transition to dependence. Dr. Koob has published over 700 peer reviewed papers and several books including the “Neurobiology of Addiction,” a comprehensive treatise on emerging research in the field, and a textbook for upper division undergraduates and graduate students called “Drugs, Addiction and the Brain.” He has mentored 11 Ph. D students and over 80 post-doctoral fellows. He received his Ph.D. in Behavioral Physiology from Johns Hopkins University in 1972. He was a post-doctorl fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology and the MRC Neuropharmacology Unit at the University of Cambridge. He spent much of his early career at the Scripps Research Institute as the Director of the Alcohol Research Center, and as Professor and Chair of the Scripps’ Committee on the Neurobiology of Addictive Disorders. He has also served as a researcher in the Department of Neurophysiology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and the Arthur Vining Davis Center for Behavioral Neurobiology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Dr. Koob is the recipient of many presitgious honors and awards recognizing his contributions to research, mentorship, and international scientific collaboration.

Kevin Kunz, MD, MPH, DFASAM
Kevin Kunz is Executive Vice President of the The Addiction Medicine Foundation and The American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM). He is an ABAM Diplomate with an active addiction medicine practice in Kona, Hawaii, and is on the faculty of the University of Hawaii’s School of Medicine. He is also board certified in Preventive Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Kunz has received local, state and national recognition for his community efforts in addiction prevention and treatment. He served as ABAM President from 2008-2011, and previously served as an ASAM Director and Chair of the ASAM Chapters Council. He was Co-chair of the ASAM Medical Specialty Action Group, which recommended that an independent medical board be established to improve the care of patients and to formally involve the medical community and all of health care in the prevention and treatment of the disease of addiction.

Petros Levounis, MD, MA
Petros Levounis, MD, MA, is professor and chair of Psychiatry at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and chief of service at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. Dr. Levounis came to Rutgers from Columbia University where he served as director of the Addiction Institute of New York and chief of addiction psychiatry at St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospitals from 2002 to 2013. Dr. Levounis is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University where he studied chemistry and biophysics as a combined BS/MS student, before receiving his medical education at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Medical College of Pennsylvania. During medical school, he researched the effects of social class on patient-physician relationships in Oxford, England, and received an MA degree in sociology also from Stanford. In 1994, he moved to New York City to train in psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute of Columbia University. He graduated from Columbia receiving the National Institute of Mental Health Outstanding Resident Award and went on to complete his fellowship in addiction psychiatry at New York University. During that time, he received the Center for Mental Health Services Minority Fellowship, which supported his research on HIV risk factors in homeless men who suffer from severe mental illness and substance use disorders. Dr. Levounis has published twelve books including the self-help paperback “Sober Siblings: How to Help Your Alcoholic Brother or Sister—and Not Lose Yourself”; the textbook of “Substance Dependence and Co-Occurring Psychiatric Disorders”; and the best-seller “Pocket Guide to Addiction Assessment and Treatment.” He is currently working on the second edition of his buprenorphine book, published by the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Levounis’s books have been translated into Portuguese, Hungarian, and Japanese. Dr. Levounis is married to actor Lukas Hassel and lives in New York City.

John Long Nguyen, MD
Dr. Nguyen is currently with Austin Travis County Integral Care as the Associate Medical Director of Crisis, Residential, and Substance Use Services and is affiliated with UT-Austin Dell Medical School and Texas A&M. He did the UCSF addiction psychiatry fellowship at the San Francisco VA and Kaiser, general psychiatry residency at NY-Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell, and medical school at Stanford. He also majored in Music at Brown and enjoys playing piano, guitar, and drums.

Richard Ries, MD, FASAM, FAPA
Dr. Richard Ries is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle, Washington. Dr. Ries serves as Associate Director of the University of Washington Addiction Psychiatry Residency Program. Dr. Ries is Director of Outpatient Psychiatry, Dual Disorder Programs, and the Chemical Dependency Project at Harborview Medical Center. He is director of substance abuse education at the University of Washington Medical School and director of the Division of Addictions for the Department of Psychiatry. He has obtained NIDA sponsored clinical research grants in 1989 and 1997 to evaluate treatment outcome in dual disorders and also helped develop and participate in a NIDA sponsored training videotape (1996) on dual disorders. Dr. Ries was chosen to chair the first official Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP#9-1994) on dual disorders by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. He is the co-editor of the key reference text Principles of Addiction Medicine, published by the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

Andrew J. Saxon, MD
Preceding his entry into psychiatry, Dr. Saxon completed an internal medicine internship and worked for 4 years as an emergency room physician. Subsequent to his general psychiatry residency at the University of Washington, Dr. Saxon has more than a quarter century of experience as a clinical and research addiction psychiatrist. Dr. Saxon is board certified with added qualifications in addiction psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. Saxon sits on the editorial boards of the journals, Drug and Alcohol Dependence and General Hospital Psychiatry and is section editor for substance use disorders for UpToDate. Dr. Saxon’s current research work is supported by the VA, the Department of Defense, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse and involves pharmacotherapies and psychotherapies for alcohol, cocaine, tobacco, and opioid use disorders as well work in co-occurrence of substance use disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder and on reducing homelessness.

Ingeborg Schafhalter-Zoppoth, MD
Dr. Ingeborg Schafhalter-Zoppoth is an internist and primary care physician at CPMC/SPMF board-certified in internal medicine and addiction medicine. After completion of her medical training in Austria she worked as researcher at UCSF and finished her residency in internal medicine/ primary care at Alameda County Medical Center. She now works as clinician educator for the CPMC internal medicine residency program where she teaches outpatient management, addiction medicine and quality improvement. Dr. Schafhalter-Zoppoth is an associate professor at the University of California San Francisco.

Craig G.. Smollin, MD|
Dr. Smollin attended medical school at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and subsequently completed his residency in Emergency Medicine at NYU/Bellevue hopsital in New York City. Following residency he completed a fellowship in medical toxicology at UCSF. After fellowhsip he joined the Emergency Medcine faculty at San Francisco General Hospital where he has been practiciing clinically for over 10 years. His current roles include Fellowship Director for the medical toxicology fellowship program at UCSF and Medical Director of the San Francisco Division of the California Poison Control System. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medciine at UCSF.

Mishka Terplan, MD, MPH
Mishka Terplan is board certified in both obstetrics and gynecology and in addiction medicine. His clinical, research and advocacy interests lie along the intersection of reproductive and behavioral health. He is currently Professor in both Obstetrics and Gynecology and Psychiatry and the Associate Director of Addiction Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond VA as well as the Addiction Medicine Consultant for Virginia Medicaid.

Katherine Watkins, MD, MSHS
Katherine E. Watkins (M.D., University of Pennsylvania; M.S.H.S., UCLA; Board Certified in Psychiatry; Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar) is a Senior Natural Scientist at the RAND Corporation. She combines a research background in substance abuse and mental health treatment services, with a clinical background in treatment for substance use and co-occurring disorders. Her research focuses on measuring the quality of behavioral health care, developing and evaluating interventions for individuals with co-occurring mental and substance-use disorders, and integrating addiction treatment into primary care settings. The long-term goal of Dr. Watkins’ research is to improve access and the quality of care provided to individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders, using both quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Tauheed Zaman, MD
Tauheed Zaman, M.D. is an addiction psychiatrist at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, where he serves as medical director of an addiction consult service caring for patients with opioid use disorder and chronic pain. He is an Assistant Professor of psychiatry at UCSF, and serves on the CSAM conference planning commmittee, opioid committee, and task force on marijuana policy reform. He completed his addiction training at UCSF, and his adult psychiatry residency at Harvard Medical School.