Prescription opioids provide much needed relief to people in acute pain, but are also widely misused, leading to addiction and over one thousand overdose deaths per month. As the annual number of prescriptions has soared to over 200 million, policymakers have been struggling with how to limit the risks of these medications while at the same time keeping them available for people in pain. In this Stanford Health Policy Forum, addiction medicine expert Anna Lembke, M.D. and pain medicine expert Sean Mackey, M.D., Ph.D., will debate and discuss how to balance the benefits and costs of prescription opioids.

Guest Speakers:

Dr. Anna Lembke received her undergraduate degree in Humanities from Yale University and her medical degree from Stanford University. She is on the faculty of the Stanford University School of Medicine, a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and a diplomate of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. She is the Program Director for the Stanford Addiction Medicine Program and Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic.

Under Dr. Sean Mackey’s leadership, researchers at the Stanford Pain Management Center and the Stanford Systems Neuroscience and Pain Laboratory (SNAPL) have made major advances in the understanding of chronic pain as a disease in its own right, one that fundamentally alters the nervous system. Dr. Mackey has overseen efforts to map the specific brain and spinal cord regions that perceive and process pain, which has lead to the development of a multidisciplinary treatment model that translates basic science research into innovative therapies to provide more effective, personalized treatments for patients with chronic pain.

Moderator:

Paul Costello is Chief Communications Officer at the Stanford School of Medicine.

For event details, visit http://med.stanford.edu/healthpolicyforum/event-calendar.html.