2019 Speaking Faculty

Jeffrey A. Berman is a Diplomate and Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He is both the Director of Addiction Psychiatry at SOBA College Recovery in New Brunswick, NJ and Executive Medical Director of Discovery Institute for Addictive Disorders in Marlboro, NJ. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Dr. Berman is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) in Adult and Addiction Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine. He has been certified by the American Society of Addiction Medicine since 1988 and is also board certified in Addiction Medicine by the American Board of Preventive Medicine.

He is currently Psychiatric Consultant to the Newark Field office of the Department of Homeland Security's Department of Immigration Health Services.

Prior to coming to New Jersey, Dr. Berman served as Medical Director of Gieisinger Health Care’s Marworth Chemical Dependency Center and was also consultant to pain management centers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. His practice focused on issues relating to addiction, pain and co-occurring mood disorders while also taking an active role in the medical treatment of HIV patients.

Dr. Berman previously served at Bergen Regional Medical Center, New Jersey’s largest acute psychiatric hospital, as Director of Chemical Dependency Services. Dr. Berman served as Chief of Psychiatry at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and at the Department of Defense’s US Disciplinary Barracks.

Dr. Berman’s area of special interest in research and teaching is Pain Management and Co-occurring Opioid Dependence. He is a strong advocate for Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) for those with chronic persistent mental illness.

Since participating in NIDA’s clinical trials of Buprenorphine/Naloxone for the treatment of heroin addiction (CTN-02) in 2001, Dr Berman has developed innovative treatment programs for individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders.

Dr. Berman recently retired from the US Army Reserve after 22 years of service. He had actively served in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom.

Dr. Mark Bicket is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he serves as Director of the multidisciplinary pain medicine fellowship and Director of quality safety and assurance for the pain division. He also is a core faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness. He is double boarded in chronic pain medicine and anesthesiology. He is nationally recognized for his research examining the safety and quality of treatments for acute and chronic pain, with special emphasis on prescription opioid analgesics and interventional pain procedures. In addition to his expertise conducting evidence based syntheses of analgesic treatments, Dr. Bicket also has experience in the conduct of clinical trials and analyses of secondary data sources from surveys and claims data. His research and work has been published in BMJ, JAMA Surgery, Anesthesiology, Regional Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, and The Spine Journal, among others. His research has also been the subject of national news media including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and other international venues. Dr. Bicket received his M.D. from Johns Hopkins and completed a clinical pain fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Marlene Capps, M.D., is the Chief Medical Officer for Bon Secours Mary Immaculate Hospital. Prior to joining Bon Secours she served as managing partner of West Point Family Practice, and has held several leadership positions with the Tidewater Physicians Multispecialty Group.

Dr. Capps is responsible for leading system-wide initiatives, such as care coordination, population health and quality management, informatics and information sharing, for Bon Secours Mary Immaculate. She has a special interest in workflow analysis, best practice imbedding, and process barrier reduction.

Dr. Capps is board certified by the American Board of Family Practice and the American Board of Obesity Medicine. She holds a Master’s of Science in Health Care Delivery. She is a graduate of Virginia Tech and Eastern Virginia Medical School.

• Marine Substance Abuse Services Commission
• Floridians for Recovery
• Faces and Voices of Recovery
• Substance Abuse Awareness Council of Indian River
• Member of Leadership Council for the Association of Recovery Organizations(ARCO)
• Member of the Kennedy Forum
• Advisory Board member for Cohen Veterans Bioscience
• Children's Home Society of the Treasure Coast
• Police, Treatment and Community Collaborative - Founding Member

• Empire State Opioid Epidemic Innovation Award (2018)
• Co-Occurring Collaborations - Innovative Practice Award (2017)
• C4 Recovery Solutions - Frederick French Award of Excellence (2015)
• The President's Call to Service - Lifetime Achievement Award (2013)
• Children's Home Society of Florida - Treasure Coast Division - The David & Lorraine Thomas Child Advocate Award (2009)
• Congressional Award - Flag of the United States for Advocacy with Foster Children (2009)
• Guardian AD Litem 19th Judicial District - Governor of Florida Annual Child Advocacy Award (2006)

Daniel J. Durand, M.D. serves as the Chief Innovation Officer and Chairman of Radiology for LifeBridge Health, a $2.5 B health care system with 4 hospitals, 500 physicians, and over 100 locations and joint ventures in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Dr. Durand earned his medical degree at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and has over twenty years of experience in healthcare, science, and technology. Before becoming CINO, Dr. Durand led the LifeBridge Health ACO, LLC, one of the largest and most successful Medicare Accountable Care Organizations in the state of Maryland. Dr. Durand previously served as the first Director of Accountable Care for Johns Hopkins Medicine, where he led operations and strategy for one of the nation's largest ACOs. Prior to Hopkins, Dr. Durand was a Vice President and member of the executive leadership team at Evolent Health, a healthcare IT start-up where he helped grow revenues from $8 million to $130 million in the time leading up to Evolent's successful IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. Prior to Evolent, Dr. Durand worked as an Associate with McKinsey & Company out of the firm's Washington, DC office.

Pamela Greenberg is President and CEO of the Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness (ABHW). She joined the association in 1998 and since that time has become a nationally recognized leader on managed behavioral health care policy issues. In her role, she works on a variety of policy issues that are important to health plans and will increase quality and access to behavioral health care. One of Pamela’s greatest accomplishments is the leadership role she played in developing, advocating for, and getting the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 signed into law.

ABHW is the leading association working to raise awareness, reduce stigma, and advance federal policy to improve mental health and addiction care. ABHW represents major national and regional health plans who care for more than 200 million people.

Pamela has worked on both behavioral health and managed care issues for almost three decades. She began by lobbying for both a large managed care company and substance use disorder treatment providers when she worked at a small boutique health care consulting firm in Washington, DC. That led to a position in America’s Health Insurance Plans’ (AHIP) Federal Affairs Department lobbying on issues such as health reform, Patients’ Bill of Rights, and Medicare reform. Pamela left AHIP to run the Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness.

Pamela currently serves on InnovaTel Telepsychiatry’s Strategic Advisory Board and has spent many years on the boards of both the national and local chapter of the Lupus Foundation of America.

Ms. Greenberg has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount Holyoke College and a Masters in Public Policy from Georgetown University.

Selin Hoboy, Vice President Government Affairs and Compliance for Stericycle, Inc, has been working with Stericycle operations since 2000. Selin is responsible for working in all regulatory matters at all levels (EPA, DOT, OSHA, DEA, FDA, CPSC, etc.). She serves on several trade associations such as Chair Healthcare Waste Institute and participates on Environmental Technology Council. Selin has worked closely on legislative and regulatory changes related to Opioid Crisis such as participating in the changes of the DEA Controlled Substance Act. Selin provided critical support to federal, state and local authorities during the Ebola crisis. She currently sits on two Ebola training Advisory Boards. Prior to Stericycle: Optima Batteries and Weston Consulting, Inc. BS - Penn State in Environmental Resource Management.

Randy Jernejcic M.D. is the newly appointed Vice Chair of Clinical Integration for University Hospitals of Cleveland. Previously, he was the chief medical officer for University Hospitals Ahuja Medical Center and Interim Director, Pain Institute, University Hospitals. He will continue as the Chair of the Opioid Patient Safety Steering Committee at University Hospitals. Dr. Jernejcic is also the 2018 Chair of the Northeast Ohio Hospital Opioid Consortium Executive Committee.

He is Board Certified in Family Medicine and is a graduate of The Ohio State University for both his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and medical school. He completed his residency program in Family Medicine at OhioHealth Grant Medical Center and has twenty years of clinical experience in both primary care and emergency medicine as well as ten years of executive physician leadership.

Stephanie Madl has a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Psychology from West Virginia University and a Master’s of Counselor Education, with an emphasis in Chemical Dependency, from Penn State University. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Pennsylvania and has worked in the field of substance abuse for over 27 years. Stephanie has provided substance abuse prevention and treatment services throughout her career in various residential and outpatient treatment systems in Pennsylvania.

For the past 5 years, she has worked at Pyramid Healthcare, Inc., initially as the Performance Improvement Director and Regional Director of Outpatient Treatment Services and now serves as an Assistant Vice President of Operations for Pyramid Healthcare overseeing outpatient and methadone systems across Pennsylvania.

Stephanie lives in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, located near Pittsburgh, PA with her brittany named Abbey. She enjoys spending time with her fiancé, Jamie, and hiking, running, and kayaking as much as possible.

Dr. Ali Mchaourab is Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He was the Chief of the Pain Medicine Service at the Northeast Ohio VA Health Care System in Cleveland from 2003 to 2018.

Dr. Mchaourab started the VA SCAN-ECHO Center (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) in Northeast Ohio VA Health Care System in Cleveland. Through innovative use of video-teleconferencing technology, much needed pain care education was provided to the primary care workforce in Cleveland and other VAs around the country, supported by multi-million-dollar grants over 7 years. He and his team were awarded the 2015 American Pain Society Clinical Center of Excellence for their tremendous achievements in pain care, particularly when it comes to low reliance on, and safety of opioids utilization.

Dr. Mchaourab has championed a reduced reliance on opioids for well over a decade. Years before the term “opioid epidemic� became commonplace, he recognized that the relatively new reliance on opioids was not a sustainable model. His early initiatives resulted in drastically lowered opioid prescription rates at the Cleveland VA, to the extent that the facility became a significant outlier in VHA.

In September 2017, the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis along with VA secretary David Shulkin visited and commanded him and the Cleveland VA on their unique work and results. His program was recognized in the final report to President Trump in November 2017.

Michael Meit serves as Senior Research Scientist for the Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis, part of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. Mr. Meit is responsible for NORC projects in the areas of rural health, public health, and preparedness. Prior to joining the Walsh Center, Mr. Meit was the director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Rural Health Practice in Bradford, Pennsylvania, and co-director for rural Preparedness for the University of Pittsburgh Center for Public Health Preparedness.

Mr. Meit currently provides leadership on NORC projects in the areas of emergency preparedness, mental health and substance abuse in the Appalachian Region, and rural public health financing, among others. During his tenure as Director of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Rural Health Practice activities included development and dissemination of the national Rural Public Health Research Agenda, development of state and national policy briefs on rural public health infrastructure, public health preparedness training, and a variety of rural health research projects. Mr. Meit has also held positions with the National Association of County and City Health Officials and the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Mr. Meit currently serves on the National Advisory Committee for Rural Health and Human Services, charged with advising the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services on issues of rural concern, and is Chair of the National Rural Health Association’s Rural Public Health Interest Group.

Garrett E. Moran, Ph.D., serves as the project director of the AHRQ Academy for Integrating Behavioral Health and Primary Care. He is a Westat vice president and associate director with nearly 45 years of experience in public policy, program evaluation, research, and management. He led an Academy team that recently drafted the AHRQ report Implementing MAT for OUD in Rural Primary Care: An Environmental Scan. In addition to working on the Academy, he is directing a study of the “Optimal Utilization of Psychosocial Support in Medication Assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder� for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Moran is also collaborating with Project ECHO at the University of New Mexico to provide technical assistance to federally qualified health centers attempting to implement MAT for OUD. He has consulted with a number of States that are working to restructure their health and behavioral health delivery systems and improve their ability to respond to the OUD epidemic. His major areas of substantive expertise include public policy and financing issues related to people with substance use or mental disorders; integrated health care delivery; health care reform; and health information technology.

Dr. Dahlia Rizk is the founder and Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at Mt Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center in New York since its inception in 1999 and President of Mount Sinai Beth Israel’s Medical Board. Additionally, she holds the academic appointment of Associate Professor at Mt Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, previously Albert Einstein School of Medicine, and is Vice President of Physician and Patient Access for Mt Sinai Downtown, an outreach program with the goal of integration and affiliation into the health system for primary care, sub-specialty sites and urgent care centers around the city, helping expand the health system’s network of referring providers and partners.

Dr. Rizk specializes in Inpatient Hospital Medicine, managing a group of 30 physicians and physician assistants responsible for the care of over 13,000 admitted patients per year. She developed the successful Surgical Co-Management Service and opened the hospital’s first Observation Unit, which has seen over 20,000 patients to date. She also leads a variety of initiatives and committees at Mt Sinai Beth Israel including several quality initiatives and utilization management efforts.

Dr. Rizk received her medicine degree from Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Missouri, and completed her residency training in Internal Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center. She completed her Masters Degree in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

She belongs to numerous professional organizations including the Society of Hospital Medicine, serving on its Public Policy Committee and representing the society at The American College of Physician’s Subspecialty Society Summits in Washington DC twice yearly. She has been a course director for SHM’s Northeast Regional course for the last several years and has received a variety of awards and grants both nationally and locally with multiple presentations, abstracts and publications. Her primary interests are patient safety and quality improvement, as well as public and global health.

Sarah A. Wattenberg is the director of quality and addiction services at the National Association for Behavioral Healthcare. In this role, she oversees the association’s interest, positions, and actions related to behavioral healthcare quality and addiction services.

Previously, Sarah worked as senior policy advisor at the White House Office of National Drug Policy. In that role, she served on the President Obama’s parity task force and provided technical assistance on President Trump’s opioid commission report. For five years she served as the drug policy advisor to the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Sarah spent nearly two decades working in the federal government, advising high-level executive branch officials about emerging issues, challenges, and policy opportunities related to opioids and other drugs; evidence-based practices; service-delivery arrangements; public and commercial financing and parity; privacy and treatment quality. She also brings with her clinical experience, as she spent 11 years working in and directing community-based programs for the seriously mentally ill, opened a mental health clinic, and supported developing Maryland’s “crisis� regulations. Before she began her work with the federal government, she was the senior director for clinical policy development at one of the nation’s largest managed behavioral healthcare companies.

Sarah earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University and her master’s degree in social work from Catholic University of America.