ASAM Pain and Addiction: Common Threads Course XXVI - 2025

Dr Rudolf is a physician board certified in addiction medicine, pain medicine, medical acupuncture and family medicine practicing at Swedish Pain Services in Seattle. The clinic integrates multidisciplinary pain care approaches in an effort to optimize patient functional outcomes and self-efficacy. He has also worked extensively in inpatient substance use disorder treatment settings and has published on the topic of opioid withdrawal management. He is the current Chair of the ASAM Pain and Addiction Committee, the immediate past president of the Washington Society of Addiction Medicine, and is a clinical associate professor at University of Washington.

Dr. Manhapra completed his M.B.B.S. degree from Government Medical College, Thrissur, India and Internal Medicine residency from Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI. He was a practicing internist for over a decade and then completed VA Advanced Inter-professional Fellowship in Addiction Treatment at West Haven VA Medical center, CT, affiliated to Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine. He has been a clinician, researcher and scholar focused on recovering people with pain and addiction for the past decade. He is currently the Section Chief of Pain Medicine at Hampton VA Medical Center, Hampton, Virginia and runs an interdisciplinary clinic helping people with complex chronic pain and multimorbidity find a path to functional recovery. Dr. Manhapra and colleagues pioneered the concept of complex persistent opioid dependence/opioid induced chronic pain as an explanation of ineffectiveness of long term opioid therapy and its deprescribing. Dr. Manhapra also advanced the treatment of ineffective long term opioid therapy and failed opioid taper using buprenorphine based pharmacobehavioral approaches. 

Mel Pohl, MD, DFASAM is a Board Certified Family Practitioner. He is the Medical Director of Las Vegas Recovery Center (LVRC). Dr. Pohl was a major force in developing LVRCs Chronic Pain Recovery Program. He is certified by the American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM), and a Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). Dr. Pohl is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. He is a nationally known public speaker and co-author of Pain Recovery: How to Find Balance and Reduce Suffering from Chronic Pain (Central Recovery Press, 2009); Pain Recovery for Families: How to Find Balance When Someone Elses Chronic Pain Becomes Your Problem Too (Central Recovery Press, 2010). Dr. Pohl is the author of A Day without Pain (Central Recovery Press, 2008), which won a silver medal from Independent Publisher Book Award in May 2009. His new book writtten with Kathy Ketcham is The Pain Antidote: The Proven Program to Help You Stop Suffering From Chronic Pain, Avoid Addiction to Painkillers - and Reclaim Your Life (DeCapo). Las Vegas Recovery Center- Salary- Medical Director

Aram Mardian, M.D. is a clinical associate professor of Family, Community, and Preventive Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine–Phoenix is a board-certified family physician and holds additional certifications in addiction medicine, pain medicine, and medical acupuncture. He is the founding Chief of the Chronic Pain Wellness Center at the Phoenix VA Health Care System, which models interprofessional whole-person care for patients with pain and opioid use disorder.  Dr. Mardian serves as Co-Chair for the Arizona Pain and Addiction Curriculum Workgroup.

Emanuel N. Husu, M.D. is currently an Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at Baylor College of Medicine where he integrates addiction medicine into his interventional pain management practice, the latter of which consists mainly of spine medicine, but also includes headache, abdominal pain, musculoskeletal pain management. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Irvine. He spent some time after that conducting brain cancer research and ketogenic diet research related to pediatric epilepsy. He then went on to obtain his medical degree from the University of Arizona School of Medicine Tucson. He completed his internship at Abington Hospital - Jefferson Health and residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Husu then completed a pain medicine fellowship in the Departments of Rehabilitation Medicine and Anesthesiology at the University of Minnesota. Following his pain medicine fellowship, he worked for two years as an interventional pain physician in the Chicagoland area during which he was confronted with a disturbingly high prevalence of substance abuse among his patients, in particular that of prescription opioids. This prompted him to complete an addiction medicine fellowship at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

Laura Morgan Frankart is currently Director of Education and Assessment and Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacotherapy and Outcomes Science at Virginia Commonwealth University/Medical College of Virginia. She works as a clinical pharmacist in palliative care at VCU Health Massey Cancer Center. She previously worked for 9 years in the Primary Care Pain Clinic in the MCV Physicians Internal Medicine clinic. She has co-authored publications related to using opioid risk screening tools and prescription monitoring programs in practice and unintentional prescription opioid overdose.

Chelsea L. Shover, PhD is an Assistant Professor-in-Residence at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles. Her lab’s work unites quantitative data analysis with community based participatory research on overdose, substance use disorders, infectious diseases, and homelessness. Dr. Shover grew up in Pennsylvania, graduated from Harvard College, completed her PhD at UCLA, and did a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Dr. Shover’s work is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to improve overdose surveillance in Los Angeles and operate a toxicological surveillance program to identify emerging illicit drugs of concern. Alongside her academic research, Dr. Shover has worked in local government, community clinics, and policy advising capacities, all of which inform her team’s approach to urgent and complex public health problems.

Since 2011, Dr. Jean Bennett has served as the Philadelphia-based Regional Director for SAMHSA Region 3, which includes PA, DE, MD, DC, VA, and WV. Dr. Bennett’s portfolio spans SAMHSA’s wide array of behavioral health continuum priorities. Dr. Bennett consults with state officials and other stakeholders to promote using SAMHSA-funded grants, technical assistance, training, and other resources. Region 3’s most pressing recent focus areas are reducing pharmacy dispensing barriers of medications for opioid use disorders (MOUD), 42CFR Part 8, treatment for substance use disorders in adolescents, the workforce, expanding access to MOUD treatment for individuals in correctional facilities and care the pregnant women with OUD. Harm Reduction and Naloxone saturation, 988 crisis systems of care, prevention, and addiction education are additional longstanding regional learning collaboratives. Elevating policy issues by learning from the field is a key priority.

Dr. Bennett has also served as the Senior Advisor to the HHS Assistant Secretary for Administration, in Public Health Preparedness and Response roles with HHS, the Veterans Administration in San Francisco, and Children’s Hospital Boston. Jean retired as a Navy Nurse Corps Captain after assignments in pediatric, ICU, surgical, medical-oncology, and outpatient settings, and spent 10 years in medical recruiting. Dr. Bennett has four degrees including a PhD in organization and management and has co-authored recent articles on “The Federal Response to the Opioid Crisis,” and “Integrating Evidence-Based Guidelines on Pain and Opioids into Medical School Education."