Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE) Establishes Scientific Advisory Council to Advance Initiatives Addressing the Nationwide Opioid Crisis

NEW YORK, Jan. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE) today announced the establishment of its Scientific Advisory Council to provide program-related guidance to assist the Foundation in addressing the nation's opioid crisis. Comprised of nationally renowned experts, the Council will advise FORE's board of directors and staff on the latest scientific trends and developments, grantmaking policy and strategy, and other matters related to stemming the alarming increase in opioid addiction and overdoses impacting communities across the country.

"We thank these extraordinary leaders for sharing their time and expertise with us," said Karen A. Scott, MD, MPH., President of FORE. "By listening to and learning from our Council's expertise and varied perspectives, FORE will be able to build on the work we launched in 2020, as well as bolster our mission to support the most effective patient-centered, evidence-based solutions."

The seven members of the Scientific Advisory Council are:

Hoover Adger, Jr., MD, MPH, MBA -- Professor of Pediatrics & Director of Adolescent Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Past President of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA).  Dr. Adger is the director of the Substance Use Assessment/Intervention team at The Johns Hopkins Adolescent Program. Dr. Adger is a past Deputy Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Keith Humphreys, PhD -- Esther Ting Memorial Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.  Dr. Humphreys is also a Senior Research Career Scientist at the VA Health Services Research Center in Palo Alto, CA, 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. 

Erin Krebs, MD, MPH -- Chief of General Internal Medicine at Minneapolis VA Health Care System; Core Investigator at Minneapolis VA Center for Care Delivery and Outcomes Research; Professor of Medicine at University of Minnesota.  Dr. Krebs professional goal is to improve the management of chronic pain in primary care. She conducts research focused on chronic pain, benefits and harms of opioid analgesics, and care of patients prescribed long-term opioids.

Cortney Lovell -- Partner & Co-Founder of Our Wellness Collective.  Ms. Lovell is an innovative recovery leader who has spent the past decade growing wellness and recovery-focused initiatives across local, state, federal, and international levels. A recovery professional and coach, Ms. Lovell is the Co-Founder and Partner of Our Wellness Collective, RecoveryTraining.Online, and is the Cross-Systems Director of Families Together in New York State.

Paul N. Samuels, JD -- Director and President of Legal Action Center. For more than four decades, Mr. Samuels has worked on a wide range of substance use disorder/mental health and criminal justice legal and policy issues at the federal, state, and local levels, including developing creative strategies to increase public and private financing for treatment and improve the quality of treatment, and to move the criminal legal system to a primary focus on diverting people to needed health care rather than punishment and incarceration. He works with government agencies, service providers, national organizations, and the recovery community and other directly impacted people to implement those strategies and educate the public and policymakers.

José Szapocznik, PhD -- Chair Emeritus of the Department of Public Health Sciences & Director of the Center for Family Studies at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Szapocznik is Professor of Public Health Sciences, Psychology, Architecture, and Educational & Psychological Studies at the University of Miami. He is founding director for the NIDA-funded National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network's Florida Node Alliance, one of fifteen drug abuse treatment research centers in the Network. He was also the founding director of the NCATS/NIMHD-funded Miami Clinical and Translational Science Institute. He has been a NIDA-funded researcher since 1978, having received over $125 Million from the NIH. He has made pioneering contributions to drug prevention and treatment research with Hispanic adolescents and their families.

Mishka Terplan, MD, MPH, FACOG, DFASAM -- Senior Physician Research Scientist at Friends Research Institute. Dr. Terplan is board certified in both obstetrics and gynecology and in addiction medicine. His primary clinical, research and advocacy interests lie along the intersections of reproductive and behavioral health. He is Associate Medical Director at Friends Research Institute, Deputy Chief Clinical Officer at the Department of Behavioral Health, District of Columbia, and adjunct faculty at the University of California, San Francisco where he is a Substance Use Warmline clinician for the National Clinician Consultation Center.

About FORE
The Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE) was founded in 2018 as a private 501(c)(3) national, grant-making foundation focused on addressing the nation's opioid crisis. FORE is committed to funding a diversity of projects contributing solutions to the crisis at national, state, and community levels. FORE's mission is to convene and support partners advancing patient-centered, innovative, evidence-based solutions impacting people experiencing opioid use disorder, their families, and their communities. To date, FORE has awarded 34 grants totaling $11.1 million.

SOURCE Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE)

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