Integrating Addiction Medicine with Treatment Courts - Monday, June 3, 2024

Dr.Salisbury-Afshar is an Associate Professor at the University ofWisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses on improving the health and wellbeing ofpeople who use drugs and alcohol. She is a physician who is board-certified inaddiction medicine, family medicine, and preventive medicine/general publichealth, and her expertise lies at the intersection of these fields. Her workincludes patient care, teaching, public health practice, and research relatedto implementation and evaluation of addiction treatment and harm reductionprograms. Dr. Salisbury-Afshar serves as the Program Director of the PreventiveMedicine Residency and as the Medical Director of Harm Reduction Services forthe Wisconsin Department of Health Services Division of Public Health. She has overfourteen years of experience working clinically in federally qualified healthcenters. Her current clinical work includes  serving as Medical Directorof a low barrier clinic for people who use drugs and as a physician on theaddiction medicine consult team at UW Hospital. She is also core faculty in theUW Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program.

Debra R. Newman, PA-C, MSPAS, MPH served as the Medical Practitioner for Adult Drug and Mental Health Treatment Courts in Santa Fe County, New Mexico for the over six years, and currently provides training and technical assistance for the NM Department of Therapeutic Justice. She formerly served in this role for the Rio Arriba (NM) Adult Drug and Mental Health Treatment Courts, and the Santa Fe County DWI Court. Debra was a 2017-2018recipient of the PA Foundation/NIDA-CTN Mentored Outreach Award in Treatment Dissemination: “Utilizing Psychiatric PA’s in Drug/Treatment Courts.”

Her passion for addiction medicine began with her association with Project ECHO while employed at a large FQHC in northern NM more than 15 years ago, a region historically plagued with the highest per capita heroin overdose death rate in the nation. Debra worked as the only full-time provider for patients struggling with SUDs.

Debra is the only PA to serve as a Lead Mentor for the Provider Clinical Support System (PCSS and serves as a Co-Editor for ASAM Weekly.

In her current role with Encompass Community Services, a non-profit organization in Santa Cruz, CA that provides services in behavioral health and family andsocial well-being, she is Lead Provider for outpatient SUD services.

Meghan Wheeler is the director of standards and conference programming for AllRise/Treatment Court Institute. She is responsible for developing training, technical assistance, and tools to support the implementation of best practice standards for treatment court models and also assists in the development of best practice standards. In her 18-year tenure with All Rise, she has served as project director and senior consultant on the Adult Drug Court Planning and Training Initiatives, Statewide Training and Technical Assistance, and Family Treatment Court Planning and Training Initiatives. She has provided training and technical assistance to treatment courts nationwide. Prior to her work with All Rise, she managed the statewide treatment court implementation for the Supreme Court of Ohio, worked at the local level as a treatment court coordinator, and served as a counselor and clinical supervisor for a residential substance use treatment facility. Ms. Wheeler has national, state, and local experience in the justice, treatment, child welfare, and social services fields related to clinical intervention, supervision, case management, policy development, program management, grant writing, and curriculum design. She previously was an adjunct professor at Ashland University in the area of alcoholism and substance use. She received her master's degree in administration of justice, a bachelor's in psychology, and a bachelor's in criminal justice from Mercyhurst University.   

Dr. Soumya L. Pandalai is a board certified physician in the field of Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine. She currently works at Banner University Medical Center Phoenix (BUMCP) in Phoenix, Arizona as a specialist in Addiction Medicine and provides both inpatient consultation services and outpatient treatmentr to persons with Substance Use Disorders (SUDs). Dr. Pandalai enjoys the clinical practice of Addiction Medicine and finds the neuroscience of addiction to be intellectually stimulating and challenging to observe the health-effects that can result from various aspects of human behavior. It is also immensely rewarding to connect with patients at different stages of their recovery process and help them along their path toward healing. She hopes to inspire people to view addiction from a different lens and apply principles of substance use and reward pathways to general aspects of human motivation and other medical illnesses. Dr. Pandalai is proud and grateful to work with an interdisciplinary team of hospital staff, social workers, counselors and other medical providers to create a more inclusive and health-focused model for substance use treatment, chronic pain and use of treatment options like tele-health to advance the care of vulnerable patient populations.

Steve Hanson, M.S. Ed., is a Senior Treatment Consultant for AllRise/Treatment Court Institute. Having been a faculty member for AllRise (founded as National Association of Drug Court Professionals in 1994) for over 20 years, Mr. Hanson began his current role in January of 2023. 

Previously, he served as the Associate Commissioner for Courts and Criminal Justice for the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services. He was responsible for relationships with the various criminal justice entities including Drug Courts, State and local corrections, probation and parole. Previously he had served as the Associate Commissioner of Treatment for OASAS with responsibilities for the oversight of state operated treatment programs, adolescent services, criminal justice and Recovery services.

He taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in Psychopharmacology at SUNY Brockport for 20 years.

Steve has over 40 years of experience in the field as a treatment provider, educator and consultant. His ability to train criminal justice practitioners on drug abuse and treatment has been recognized both nationally and internationally.