Board of Advocates

Advocates for Prescription Opioid Reform
prescriptionopioidreform.com

Families, Patients, and Doctors, Hoping for Change

BOARD OF ADVOCATES 

Betts Tully, Executive Director
Patient Advocate
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BOARD OF ADVOCATES BACKGROUND INFO

Betts Tully

Chicago, Illinois

Retired business owner, elected town Trustee

Reason for involvement with APOR: 

In 2001, I was prescribed 280mg. of OxyContin and and 8 Norco daily, from a physician, who I sought help from, for an increase in low back pain.   It took me an additional 7 years to get myself off of medically prescribed high dose opioids.  I am currently free of these medical narcotics, and have a different regimen for my chronic low back pain.  In my desperate search to get my life back again, I have learned that not only doctors have been mis-informed, but patients have, also.   I certainly, have.

Medical mis-information, given to physicians by pharmaceutical companies has effected my life and millions of other pain patients.  Pain patients, looking for help with their pain are ending up in detox centers all over the world, many of them senior citizens, like me.  Pain patients deserve to be treated “appropriately”, with science-based evidence, training, and education, that guides the physician’s best practices.  Not end up with an additional conditions called “hyper-algesia” and “addiction”, and in some cases, “death”, due to inappropriate treatments.  I am lucky I only ended up with two of those side effects of inappropriate prescribing practices.  I am committed to the patients “right” to get effective and appropriate pain treatments, based on best practices.  APOR, will be committed to not only the general public’s welfare, where prescription opioids are concerned, but to the patient’s welfare as well.  APOR will strive to re-educate, doctors, patients, and the public, who are now subject to a public health crisis of death and addiction involving the legal source of prescription opioids.

 FDA TESTIMONY

ADVISORY BOARD:

Dr. Andrew Kolodny

Dr. Andrew Kolodny  is Chairman of Psychiatry at  Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn , New York. Dr. Kolodny believes that caring for patients with mental illnesses and substance use disorders includes a responsibility to advocate on their behalf. Dr. Kolodny has a long-standing interest in public health and community psychiatry.  He was previously the Medical Director for Special Projects in the Office of the Executive Deputy Commissioner for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In this role, Dr. Kolodny helped develop and implement multiple programs to improve the health of New Yorkers and save lives, including city-wide buprenorphine programs and emergency room-based screening and referral programs for drug and alcohol misuse. He has helped train hundreds of clinicians about buprenorphine treatment of opioid dependence and has authored publications aimed at improving the ability of primary care physicians to recognize and treat depression and substance use disorders.

Dr. Steve Gelfand

Stephen G. Gelfand, MD, FACP has practiced rheumatology for 35 years and is now semi-retired. A graduate of Albany Medical College of Union University in Albany, N.Y. he trained in Internal Medicine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and Queens General Hospital in New York City, and in Rheumatology at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Memphis. He served with the U.S.Army as major and Chief Internist at Redstone Arsenal, Ala. American board-certified in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology, he is also a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and American College of Rheumatology.

Before moving to the rural South where he practiced rheumatology for the last 15 years, Dr. Gelfand spent almost 20 years practicing rheumatology and internal medicine in Southern California, during which time he established the first rheumatology practice in the City of Anaheim, spent three years with Kaiser-Permanente, and served as Director of Rheumatology at both the White Memorial Medical Center and CIGNA Healthplan in Los Angeles. He has been on the teaching faculties of the University of California School of Medicine, Irvine, Loma Linda University School of Medicine, and the University of Illinois School of Medicine at Peoria.

Public and physician education has always been a major priority of Dr, Gelfand, who over the years has given numerous lectures and written many articles on arthritis and related rheumatic disorders, while actively promoting multidisciplinary treatment strategies and the Arthritis Foundation's self-management programs to improve patient care, well beyond the benefit of medications alone. Over the last 6 years, he has also served as a national independent disability peer-reviewer in rheumatology and has done numerous medical record case reviews of rheumatologists throughout the nation.

His published articles, case reports, letters and commentaries have appeared in popular medical journals, magazines and internet publications such as the Annals of Internal Medicine, The Rheumatologist, PainMedicine News, Arthritis & Rheumatism, Arthritis Care & Research, The Journal of Rheumatology and Medscape Rheumatology. Over the last 10 years, he has written about the pitfalls and consequences occurring from the over-marketing and over-prescribing of opioid analgesics for chronic noncancer pain, as well alternative beneficial non-narcotic therapies incorporating mind/body principles. This issue has become his major interest, especially after coming in contact with many of the dedicated individuals of this group, most of whom have experienced personal tragedies related to prescription opioids. This has provided the major drive and motivation to continue to educate both physicians and the public, with the goal of eventually reducing the mounting toll of opioid-related addiction, overdose and death which has become a true public health crisis.

Dr. Petros Levounis

Petros Levounis, MD, MA, is Director of The Addiction Institute of New York and Associate Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospitals in New York City. Dr. Levounis is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist, Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He also teaches at New York University School of Medicine and School of Nursing, and the Hazelden Foundation. His academic interests include the psychotherapy and psychopharmacology of addiction and co-occurring psychiatric disorders, the teaching of Psychiatry, gay and lesbian mental health, and the behavioral addictions.

Dr. Levounis is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University where he studied Chemistry and Biophysics as a combined BS/MS student, before receiving his medical education at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Medical College of Pennsylvania. During medical school, he studied the effects of social class on the patient-physician relationship in Oxford, England, and received an MA degree in Sociology from Stanford. In 1994, he moved to New York City to train in Psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute of Columbia University. He graduated from Columbia receiving the National Institute of Mental Health Outstanding Resident Award before completing a two-year clinical and research fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry at New York University under the mentorship of Dr. Marc Galanter. Dr. Levounis received the APA/Center for Mental Health Services Minority Fellowship and studied HIV risk factors in homeless men who suffer from severe mental illness and substance use disorders. In 2006, Dr. Levounis completed the Leadership Development for Physicians in Academic Health Centers Program at Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Levounis has authored several articles, has lectured extensively on addiction topics throughout the United States and abroad, and has been interviewed by all the major television networks, The Martha Stewart Radio Show, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among others. He is a Betty Ford Scholar, a member and Laughlin Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists, and a recipient of the 2008 Coalition Leadership Award, the Irma Bland Award for Excellence in Teaching Residents, the Nancy Roeske Award for Excellence in Medical

Student Education, and the U.S. State Department Speaker and Specialist Award. Dr. Levounis is past president of the APA New York County District Branch, serves on the board of the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct, co-chairs the Public Policy Committee of ASAM, and is a member of the Council on Adult Psychiatry of the APA. From 2005 to 2009, he chaired the APA Committee on Addiction Treatment.

Dr. Levounis’s books include the self-help paperback “Sober Siblings: How to Help Your Alcoholic Brother or Sister—and Not Lose Yourself” (Perseus 2008), the textbook of “Substance Dependence and Co-Occurring Psychiatric Disorders” (Civic Research Institute 2010), the handbook of “Motivation and Change” (American Psychiatric Press 2010), and the manual on “Office-Based Buprenorphine Treatment of Opioid Dependence” also published by the American Psychiatric Press in 2010. He is currently writing a book on “Working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People” for general psychiatrists.

Dr. Levounis lives with his partner, actor Lukas Hassel, and has a private practice in New York City.

Dr. Irfan Dhalla

 Irfan Dhalla, MD, MSc, is a lecturer in the Departments of Medicine and Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.  He is also a staff physician in the Department of Medicine and a scientist in the Keenan Research Centre of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital.

Dr. David Juurlink

David Juurlink, MD, PhD, is head of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Ontario.  He is a medical toxicologist at the Ontario Poison Information Centre, a scientist at ICES and associate professor of medicine, pediatrics and health policy, management and evaluation at the University of Toronto


Dr. Art VanZee