Conference Planning Committee:

• Takeo Toyoshima, MD (Conference Chair)
• Dana Harris, MD, FASAM (Vice-Chair)
• Sharone Abramowitz, MD, FASAM (Advisor)
• Tiffany Arnold (Fellow)
• Joy Hao, MD, PhD
• Mitika Kanabar, MD, MPH
• Carla Marienfeld, MD
• Jessica Ristau, MD
• David Tian, MD, MPP
• Monish Ullal, MD
• Jon Watson, MD
• Farah Zaidi, MD
• Tauheed Zaman, MD
• Kenneth Saffier, MD, FASAM (MERF Representative)
• Mason Turner, MD (Chair, CSAM Education Committee)

Speakers:

Christopher Blazes, MD
Dr. Blazes is Asst. Prof. of Psychiatry and Emergency Medicine at OHSU. He is triple board-certified in psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, and emergency medicine and is the director of the OHSU addiction psychiatry Fellowship. Dr Blazes is a clinician educator whose practice is based out of the Portland VA Medical Center. He lectures widely and publishes on such topics as benzodiazepines, synthetic fentanyl analogues, buprenorphine, and the neurobiology of addiction and recovery.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Smita Das, MD
Dr. Dasis Board Certified in Psychiatry, Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine. Dr. Das studied Chemistry and Statistics at Stanford, completed her Masters in Public Health at Dartmouth College, and then completed her MD/PhD in Community Health at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She completed psychiatry residency and was chief resident at Stanford followed by an addiction psychiatry fellowship at UCSF. She has over 2 decades of experience in research in healthcare quality and addiction.
Disclosure: Lyra Health - Equity/salary

Triveni DeFries, MD, MPH
Dr. DeFries is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine at University of California, San Francisco, where she also completed a fellowship in Primary Care Addiction Medicine. She works at San Francisco General Hospital's general medicine primary care clinic, inpatient addiction medicine consult service and as a consultant for the National Clinician Consultation Center's Substance Use Warmline.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Jeffrey Devido, MD, MTS, FASAM
is currently Chief, Addiction Services, with Marin County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services, Marin County Health and Human Services; Behavioral Health Clinical Director with Partnership HealthPlan of California; and Assistant Professor, UCSF School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. Dr. DeVido has been a member of the Board of Directors with the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, and is currently a member of the American Psychiatric Association Council on Addiction.  He has published and presented on a range of topics related to addiction and mental health, and his professional work now is focused on improvement and integration of substance use and mental health treatment services within various parts of the Medi-cal system of care.  He is board certified in Psychiatry, Addiction Psychiatry, and Addiction Medicine.
Disclosure: Merch - Stockholder | Philip Morris/Altria - Stockholder

Steven J. Eickelberg, MD, DFASAM, FAPA
Dr. Eickelberg is an addiction psychiatrist who currently serves as the Chief Medical Officer of Naufar, the national substance use disorder treatment program in Qatar. He is a diplomat of both the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the American Board of Preventative Medicine in the subspecialty 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, academic and professional settings, including Kaiser Permanente, Loma Linda University School of Medicine, consultant to Major League Baseball, consultant to the FAA, provided assessments and monitoring for the FAA and aviation professionals, CMO of Sierra Tucson, Medical Director of the Betty Ford Center, and he was co-director of the Loma Linda-Kaiser Permanente addiction medicine fellowship and director of the Betty Ford Center addiction medicine fellowship. Dr. Eickelberg was President of MERF from 2002 to 2018, has served on the MERF Board of Directors since 1999, and served on the Executive Council of the California Society of Addiction Medicine (CSAM) from 1995 to 2018. In 2014 CSAM presented Dr. Eickelberg with the Vernelle Fox Award.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

David Kan, MD
Dr. Kan graduated from Northwestern University Medical School. He finished his General Psychiatry Residency and Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is Board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in General and Forensic Psychiatry and he is Board-Certified by the American Board of Addiction Medicine in Addiction Medicine. He is a member of the faculty at the UCSF Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Kan enjoys teaching, in addition to his direct work with patients. He has won multiple awards for teaching and clinical care delivery. Dr. Kan teaches and supervises psychiatrists-in-training in his role as a faculty member at UCSF. Throughout the year, he speaks at professional conferences on topics including treatment of addictive disorders. Dr. Kan offers forensic consulting services to courts and attorneys in civil, criminal, and administrative matters. He has testified in multiple states, counties and federal court as an expert witness. He is a member of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Mitika Kanabar, MD
Dr. Kanabar is an Addiction Medicine physician helping patients with substance use disorders in rural California. Dr. Kanabar did her Addiction Medicine fellowship from Stanford University. She is triple board certified in Addiction Medicine, Lifestyle Medicine and Family Medicine. Dr. Kanabar serves as a voluntary Clinical Faculty with the University of Southern California.  As a member of the NEXT committee of the International Society of Addiction Medicine, Dr. Kanabar is involved in international networking, collaboration and mentorship for early career addiction professionals. As a part of her outreach efforts in the Indian subcontinent, Dr. Kanabar has spoken in public forums of the harms of process addictions and problematic internet use. Dr. Kanabar is a part of the working committee to address international challenges for treatment of gaming disorder. She has a keen interest in lifestyle modification for chronic diseases and application of the same in patients with substance use disorders.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Tipu V. Khan, MD, FAAFP, FASAM
Dr. Khan is a Family Physician and Addiction Specialist. He is the ADM Fellowship Program Director and Core Faculty of the FM Residency at Ventura County Medical Center. He also serves as the Medial Director of HealthRight360/Prototypes Southern California, overseeing RTC and OP programs across LA, SD, and Ventura Counties. 
Disclosure: Abbvie - Consulting Fees | Alkermes - Consulting Fees

George F. Koob, PhD
Dr. Koob is an internationally-recognized expert on alcohol and stress, and the neurobiology of alcohol and drug addiction. He is the Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), where he provides leadership in the national effort to reduce the public health burden associated with alcohol misuse. As NIAAA Director, Dr. Koob oversees a broad portfolio of alcohol research ranging from basic science to epidemiology, diagnostics, prevention, and treatment. Dr. Koob earned his doctorate in Behavioral Physiology from Johns Hopkins University in 1972. Prior to taking the helm at NIAAA, he served as Professor and Chair of the Scripps’ Committee on the Neurobiology of Addictive Disorders and Director of the Alcohol Research Center at the Scripps Research Institute. Early in his career, Dr. Koob conducted research in the Department of Neurophysiology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and in the Arthur Vining Davis Center for Behavioral Neurobiology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology and the MRC Neuropharmacology Unit at the University of Cambridge.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Eve Lasswell, Psy.D.
Dr. Lasswell is a clinical psychologist and Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of who primarily treats adults with substance use disorders and co-morbid conditions. She also works with patients struggling to manage PTSD, depression, anxiety, role transitions, and interpersonal difficulties. She is part of our Addiction Recovery and Treatment (ART) program at UCSD, which uses a harm-reduction approach to provide care for all stages of recovery from substance use disorders. She is also familiar with abstinence-based models and seeks to tailor treatment to the unique needs of her individual patients.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Anna Lembke, MD
Dr. Lembke is a professor in the department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is Medical Director of Stanford Addiction Medicine, Program Director for the Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship, and Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. In 2016, she published Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), which was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic (Zuger, 2018). Dr. Lembke recently appeared on the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, an unvarnished look at the impact of social media on our lives. Her forthcoming book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence (Dutton/Penguin Random House, August 2021) explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Carla Marienfeld, MD, DFAPA, FASAM
Dr. Marienfeld is board-certified in psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, and addiction medicine, and she is a Clinical Professor at the University of California San Diego who supports recovery in an evidence based, harm-reduction approach through therapy, motivational interviewing, and medication treatment. Her research involves analysis of electronic medical record data for individuals with substance use disorders.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Veronika Mesheriakova, MD
Dr. Mesheriakova serves as an assistant clinical director of ambulatory clinics in the division of adolescent and young adult medicine and specialize in the care of adolescents and young adults. Her outpatient clinical activities include preventive care, acute care, gynecology and contraceptive management, management of medical complication of malnutrition and eating disorders, and treatment of mood disorders and substance use disorders. She sees patients in the UCSF Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine Clinic 3-5 afternoons per week and provide intermittent coverage for satellite clinics in Greenbrae and Pleasanton. She also provide inpatient clinical care for youth hospitalized for treatment of acute complications of malnutrition due to eating disorders 12 weeks per year. She is also the director of the UCSF Youth Outpatient Substance Use Program (YoSUP), a multidisciplinary, family-based program that provides comprehensive assessment and outpatient treatment for youth with problematic substance use and substance use disorders.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Julio Meza, MD
Dr. Julio Meza is an Addiction and Family Medicine Physician at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a Psychiatry in Primary Care Certified Physician at UC Irvine. While in Los Angeles, Dr. Meza worked as a medical assistant instructor and program director, training students to work in the areas of San Fernando, North Hollywood and Los Angeles then joined UCLA and completed his residency in Family Medicine and also Fellowship in Addiction Medicine. Currently he works at UCLA in the position of  Assistant Clinical Professor in Family Medicine and Addiction Medicine, he participates in multiple committees such as Pain Management and Steering Committee, Cannabis Research Initiative and Family  Medicine Hospital Committee; most recently he became Certified by the AAHIVM.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Larissa Mooney, MD
Dr. Mooney is a board certified addiction psychiatrist and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).  She is the Director of the UCLA Addiction Psychiatry Clinic and Chief of the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Substance Use Disorders Section, where she supervises psychiatrists in training in the clinical management of addictive and mental health disorders.  Dr. Mooney is the President Elect of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP), a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and a Fellow of the American Association of Addiction Medicine (ASAM).  Dr. Mooney has conducted research at UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs on pharmacological and behavioral treatment interventions for addictive disorders. She is one of two PIs for the Greater Southern California Node of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Clinical Trials Network. She has current NIDA funding to study functional outcomes in cannabis users and treatment interventions for opioid use disorder and stimulant use disorder.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

John Long Nguyen, MD
Dr. Nguyen is Program Director of the addiction psychiatry fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School and serves as Associate Medical Director for Crisis, Residential, Justice, and Substance Use Services with Integral Care, the local mental health authority for Austin and Travis County.  He completed his addiction psychiatry fellowship at UCSF, general psychiatry residency at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Cornell-Payne Whitney, and his medical degree at Stanford.  In addition to an interest in community mental health, he has experience working in settings including multidisciplinary pain management, private practice, and was formerly the Director of Addiction Treatment Services at the VA Palo Alto.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Ricardo Restrepo, MD, MPH
Dr. Restrepo finished his medical school in Medellín, Colombia.  He then did his residency training in Psychiatry at Boston University Medical Center where he completed a fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry. He received an MPH in Global Public Health from NYU in 2008, while working at St Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital, where he was Director of the Addiction Psychopharmacology Clinic at the Addiction Institute of New York.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Hannah Synder, MD
Dr. Snyder practices primary care and addiction medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. She is a Principal Investigator of the California Bridge Program, which supports acute care hospitals in offering low barrier buprenorphine starts and linkage to ongoing treatment. She is the director of the Family Health Center Bridge Clinic which provides medication first treatment for all substance use disorders.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Jonathan B. Watson, MD
Dr. Watson is a Medi-Cal Medical Driector at Beit T'Shuvah. Beit T’Shuvah is a residential treatment center for persons with substance use disorders. As a Medi-Cal Medical Director he oversees patient intake and treatment planning as well as interface with the Los Angeles DPH’s Substance Use Prevention and Control Division. He also helped direct the center’s COVID-19 risk mitigation and testing strategy.
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Tauheed Zaman, MD
Dr. Zaman is a Medical Director at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, CA. He has developed workshops on behavioral addictions, performance-enhancing drugs and models of integrated psychiatric/primary care for APA and Institute on Psychiatric Services (IPS) annual meetings. He has also advocated in Washington, DC, for funding of residency training and mental health services for veterans. 
No relevant financial relationships to disclose.