Dr. Sara McEwen is the Executive Director of the Governor’s Institute, a position she has held since 2008. The Governor’s Institute provides innovative substance use disorder related professional education and technical assistance, workforce development, and creates and facilitates extensive collaborations with and among physician groups, universities/ medical schools, community providers, and state and federal agencies to develop and sponsor programs, presentations, conferences, websites, and clinical tools that facilitate resource dissemination and uptake of proven and cost-effective prevention and treatment interventions. Dr. McEwen received her medical degree from Tulane University School of Medicine and her MPH from the University of NC Gillings School of Public Health.

Lawrence Greenblatt, M.D., FACP, is a general internist and currently serves as State Health Director and Chief Medical Officer of North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services. Here he has a broad portfolio of responsibilities including working with leadership in the Medicaid program, Public Health, State-operated medical health facilities and others. He is currently co-chair of the Governor's Cannibis Advisory Council, tasked with proposing public health measures and regulations around legal cannabis. Dr. Greenblatt holds Professor Emeritus status at Duke University School of Medicine where he was on faculty for nearly 31 years. There, he split his time primarily between patient care, population health leadership particularly focused on the Medicaid program, and clinical teaching. He served as a leader in Duke's Opioid Safety and Addiction Medicine efforts. He served for 9 years as Chair of the NC Medicaid Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee and as Secretary of the NC Medicaid Physician Advisory Group. In these roles he developed and refined policies for the Medicaid program.

James H. Berry, DO, DFAOAAM is Professor and Chair of the Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry at West Virginia University School of Medicine's Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute and the Director of Addictions. He is board certified in both General Psychiatry and Addiction Psychiatry. He and his colleagues at WVU have developed innovative community-based treatment models in response to the addiction crisis in Appalachia and are actively engaged in novel neuromodulation research related to substance use disorders through WVU's Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute including the nation's first trial of Deep Brain Stimulation for opioid use disorder. Dr. Berry has been a dedicated clinician and enthusiastic educator in West Virginia since the early days of the addiction epidemic. He is the proud recipient of The Addiction Policy Forum's Pillar of Excellence Award for Addiction Treatment, West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resource's inaugural Medical Provider Award for Advancement of Quality Addiction Care and WVU School of Medicine's Distinguished Teacher Award. Statewide, he serves as a member of the West Virginia Governor's Advisory Council on Substance Use Disorders and the Medical Cannabis Advisory Board. Nationally, He chairs the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology's Addiction Psychiatry Examination Committee and serves on the Addiction Policy Forum's Scientific Advisory Board. He has enjoyed advocating on behalf of those suffering from mental illness and addiction before audiences as varied as local town hall meetings to testifying before the United States Senate. Dr. Berry's work and opinions have led to interviews with local, state, and national media sources such as Politico, NPR, Psychology Today and The Doctors television show. He and his patients were featured in the PBS NOVA documentary: Addiction that exposed a national audience to the science behind addiction and the humanity of those who suffer.

Dr. Michael Lynch is an associate professor of Emergency Medicine, Medical Toxicology, and Addiction Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh where he works clinically in several UPMC hospitals. He is currently Senior Medical Director for Quality and Substance Use Disorder Services at UPMC Health Plan. Dr. Lynch previously served as the Medical Director of the PA Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs and was Medical Director of the Pittsburgh Poison Center for 10 years. He is the founder and director of the UPMC Medical Toxicology Telemedicine Bridge Clinic.

Kelly Crosbie brings more than 30 years of experience leading public systems that support individuals, families, and communities across multiple states, including North Carolina. She currently serves as Assistant Secretary for Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Use Services, and is Director of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Use Services, overseeing the state’s community-based system of care. Also, she is serving as Senior Advisor for Supportive Housing Strategy with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Over the past 15 years at NC DHHS, Kelly has held several senior leadership roles, including Assistant Director of Behavioral Health and Chief Operating Officer at NC Medicaid. A licensed clinical social worker with lived experience, she is deeply committed to advancing equitable, person-centered care.

Mary Beth Cox, MPH is the Substance Use Epidemiology Team Lead within the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services' Division of Public Health. Before joining the NC Injury and Violence Prevention Branch in 2016 she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi and worked in communicable disease surveillance in New York and North Carolina. She earned her MPH in Epidemiology from New York Medical College and a BA in Religion from Wake Forest University. In her current position, Mary Beth leads a team monitoring the statewide impacts of alcohol, opioids, and other drugs and is the co-developer of the North Carolina overdose and alcohol data dashboards. She believes that public health saves lives and is passionate about making data accessible, approachable, and actionable.

Jeanette M. Tetrault, MD, FACP FASAM: Dr. Tetrault is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health, Vice-Chief for Education for the Section of General Internal Medicine, Associate Director for Training and Education for the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine, Fellowship Director for Addiction Medicine and Head of Hamburg Advisory House in the Office of Student Affairs at Yale School of Medicine. Her scholarly work focuses on care of patients with addiction and the medical conditions associated with substance use, mainly HIV and Hepatitis C. Dr. Tetrault is a staff physician at the Central Medical Unit which is an integrated addiction and primary care clinic at the APT Foundation. She has been recognized for her teaching accomplishments being awarded the New England Regional Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) Clinician Educator of the Year Award in 2013, The W. Anderson Spickard Award for Excellence in Mentorship by the Association of Multidisciplinary Education and Research in Substance use and Addiction (AMSERSA) in 2018, and the American Society of Addiction Medicine Training Directors Award in 2021 and the John P. McGovern Award for Excellence in Education by AMERSA in 2023. She serves as past-president of the board of directors of the American College of Academic Addiction Medicine. In 2017, she was recognized as a Macy Foundation Faculty Scholar. She has authored over 100 papers and chapters in the peer-reviewed literature and is an associate editor for the 7th and 8th Editions of the textbook, The ASAM Principles of Addiction Medicine.

Dr. Niess practices Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine at Duke University. She completed medical school and her masters of public health at the University of North Carolina. After training at the University of Colorado, she began her journey to Addiction Medicine with an x-waiver and some great mentoring at OHSU in 2016, followed by a community health center in New Haven, CT. She returned to North Carolina in 2020, continuing a mixed primary care and addiction practice in community health and academic settings in Charlotte and the Triangle Region. She most recently joined the Duke Outpatient Clinic to help build their addiction program at Duke and sees patients with a variety of substance use disorders in her primary care practice and on a consultative basis while teaching Addiction Medicine to Duke Internal Medicine Residents.

Keith Humphreys is the Esther Ting Memorial Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Research Career Scientist at the VA Health Services Research Center in Palo Alto and an Honorary Professor of Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London. His research addresses the prevention and treatment of addictive disorders, the formation of public policy and the extent to which subjects in medical research differ from patients seen in everyday clinical practice. For his work in the multinational humanitarian effort to rebuild the psychiatric care system of Iraq and in the national redesign of the VA health system's mental health services for Iraq war veterans, he won the 2009 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Public Interest. He and the authors of "Drug Policy and the Public Good" won the 2010 British Medical Association's Award for Public Health Book of the Year. He currently co-chairs the Stanford Network on Addiction Policy and leads the Stanford Lancet Commission on the North American Opioid Crisis.

Genevieve Verrastro, MD, is a Family Medicine Physician and an Addiction Medicine Specialist. Her areas of interest include perinatal substance use disorders, care of people with HIV, and the LGBTQ community.

Dr. Bossenbroek Fedoriw is a board-certified family medicine physician with clinical expertise in treating substance abuse disorder and chronic pain. She has been treating patients with opioid use disorder with buprenorphine since 2006 and currently holds an appointment as Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. She has taught students, residents, faculty and community prescribers about chronic pain, safe opioid prescribing, and buprenorphine treatment through lectures, discussions, book chapters and journal articles. In addition, Dr. Bossenbroek Fedoriw is currently a member of the NCSTAR Clinical Team and director of their Provider Forum.

Dr. Hillary Tamar is board-certified in both Family and Addiction Medicine. She has dedicated her career to improving care for people who use drugs, with a particular focus on expanding access to medications for opioid use disorder through opioid treatment programs. Her work emphasizes the advancement of clinical practices that prioritize safety, accessibility, and dignity for all those affected by substance use. She serves as a Territory Medical Director for Community Medical Services, providing leadership and oversight across Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. In this role, she helps guide clinical care and promote best practices across the country.

Aaron is the Harm Reduction Coordinator for Community Medical Services, a national opioid treatment provider working to ensure access to related supplies and services at clinics throughout the country. Aaron is also on the Leadership Team of the National Survivor’s Union, a group of living experience drug user health advocates and coordinates its Methadone group Naturally Noncompliant, a national coalition of methadone patients working toward opioid treatment reform. Aaron co-produces and hosts a podcast about drugs and the people who use them called Narcotica, and works to challenge media stigma and educate communities about the harms of criminalizing drugs and the people who use them. As a directly impacted person, Aaron has over 30 years of experience implementing harm reduction personally and professionally, and has contributed to numerous research, political advocacy, and public education efforts in support of people who use drugs.

Olivia Caron is a clinical pharmacist practitioner at Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC), the Residency Program Director for MAHEC’s Pharmacy PGY2 in Ambulatory Care, and an Assistant Professor at UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She received her Bachelors of Science in Chemical Engineering and Bachelors of Art in Spanish from Virginia Tech in 2015. She graduated in 2019 from Virginia Commonwealth University with her Doctorate of Pharmacy and Certificate in Aging. She completed two years of residency at MAHEC with a focus in Ambulatory Care and Academia. Olivia is fluent in French and Spanish and splits her professional time between family medicine, OB/GYN, substance use disorders, precepting, teaching, and research.

Amy Lenell, PharmD, is the Pharmacy Manager for the MAHEC Community Pharmacy at Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina. She has been a community pharmacist for 19 years, and her interests include immunization outreach, harm reduction, HIV care and public health. She holds an HIV pharmacist certification and has a special interest in HIV prevention. Dr. Lenell is also passionate about teaching and training future pharmacists. When not at work, she likes to spend time with her family and her two energetic huskies.

Dr. Niess practices Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine at Duke University. She completed medical school and her masters of public health at the University of North Carolina. After training at the University of Colorado, she began her journey to Addiction Medicine with an x-waiver and some great mentoring at OHSU in 2016, followed by a community health center in New Haven, CT. She returned to North Carolina in 2020, continuing a mixed primary care and addiction practice in community health and academic settings in Charlotte and the Triangle Region. She most recently joined the Duke Outpatient Clinic to help build their addiction program at Duke and sees patients with a variety of substance use disorders in her primary care practice and on a consultative basis while teaching Addiction Medicine to Duke Internal Medicine Residents.

Dr. Sara Martin graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed residency at Santa Rosa FM Residency after obtaining a master’s degree in comparative policy from the University of Oxford. She is a former high school teacher with a strong interest in health care policy with prior experience at local, national, and international levels. Most recently, her policy work has been focused on graduate medical education as well as addiction medicine. Prior to arriving at Duke, Dr. Martin practiced and taught full spectrum family medicine as Associate Program Director at AH Ukiah Valley Family Medicine Residency in rural northern California. She transitioned to Duke FMRP because she is committed to training high-quality family physicians that are well-equipped to take on the challenges of navigating and shaping an evolving healthcare system. In her spare time, she enjoys making her newborn son smile and exploring Durham with her husband.

Logan Adams, MD is a board-certified addiction medicine physician and internist. He is the Medical Director at McLeod Centers for Wellbeing, a non-profit addiction treatment program that serves 8 counties in the Piedmont region of the North Carolina. He is passionate about bringing evidence-based care and harm reduction paradigm to clinical interactions. His research and clinical interests are in creating innovative care models to address communities most deeply impacted by the opioid overdose crisis. He completed internal medicine residency and addiction medicine fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is from West Texas, where he attended medical school at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.

David H. Ryan MD, FASAM, FACOG is the Division Chief of ECU Addiction Medicine, and is a Clinical Assistant Professor with both the ECU Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine and the Department of OB/GYN. He is board certified in both OB/GYN and Addiction Medicine and treats patients with addictions in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. In addition to his role as Division Chief, he is also the future ECU Addiction Medicine Fellowship Director, and is the founding clinician of ECU IMPACT, eastern North Carolina’s first and only integrated perinatal addiction clinic. Other than his family and his work, his passions include his faith, food, CrossFit, nonfiction, and Ted Lasso.

Olivia Caron is a clinical pharmacist practitioner at Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC), the Residency Program Director for MAHEC’s Pharmacy PGY2 in Ambulatory Care, and an Assistant Professor at UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She received her Bachelors of Science in Chemical Engineering and Bachelors of Art in Spanish from Virginia Tech in 2015. She graduated in 2019 from Virginia Commonwealth University with her Doctorate of Pharmacy and Certificate in Aging. She completed two years of residency at MAHEC with a focus in Ambulatory Care and Academia. Olivia is fluent in French and Spanish and splits her professional time between family medicine, OB/GYN, substance use disorders, precepting, teaching, and research.

Mel Ramage (she/her) is the director of the North Carolina PSUD Network and a clinician at the Behavioral Health Group.

Dr. Baca-Atlas is a family medicine and addiction medicine physician who has built his career at the intersection of primary care, behavioral health, and substance use treatment. Originally from Baltimore, MD, he completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, and earned his MD at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. He came to UNC for his Family Medicine residency and stayed to complete UNC's Addiction Medicine fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry becoming the fellowship's first graduate. Dr. Baca-Atlas now serves as Medical Director of UNC REACH Enhanced Primary Care, Associate Medical Director of the UNC Tobacco Treatment Program, and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and OBGYN. He serves as Project Director on a five-year, $2.5 million HRSA grant supporting family medicine residency training in mental and behavioral health, and Past President of the North Carolina Society of Addiction Medicine, where he previously served two years as President. In 2025 he received the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association's Wingspread Award, and in 2024 UNC REACH was honored with UNC Health's Leading with Equity Award for Clinical and Practice Impact and in 2026 honored with the Community Health Impact Award – Outstanding Local Partnership. An active medical educator, Dr. Baca-Atlas teaches across UNC's medical school, residency, and fellowship programs and speaks regularly at regional and national conferences on addiction medicine, harm reduction, and behavioral health integration. He is a prolific contributor to Primary Care Reviews and Perspectives (Primary Care RAP), a subscription podcast reaching a national and international audience, and his clinical expertise has been featured by outlets including WRAL, ABC11, NBC News, and The Washington Post. His scholarship spans peer-reviewed research, textbook chapters on alcohol and drug use disorders, and national presentations on opioid use disorder treatment, tobacco cessation, and health equity in addiction care. Outside of medicine, he's an enthusiastic traveler, a devoted breakfast-for-dinner advocate, and happiest spending downtime with his wife.

Dr. Shane Collins is a Los Angeles-based physician, dual board-certified in psychiatry and addiction medicine. He is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at University of Southern California, where he serves as staff psychiatrist for USC Street Medicine, delivering comprehensive mental health care to people experiencing unsheltered homelessness on the streets of Los Angeles. Dr. Collins earned his MD and completed psychiatry residency at the University of Washington after earning a BA in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University and an MS in Global Health Sciences from University of California, San Francisco. In addition to his clinical practice, Dr. Collins conducts research focusing on mental health inequities and treatment of substance use disorders. He is also deeply engaged in education at USC, where he serves as Assistant Program Director for the USC Keck School of Medicine Psychiatry Residency training program. In his free time, Dr. Collins enjoys skateboarding, surfing, and hanging out at the beach with his family and friends.

Dr. Welsh is a Professor in the Division of Addiction Research & Treatment in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. His main area of clinical work is in the area of addiction. He works in various in- and out-patient settings (as well as via Tele-medicine), including methadone and buprenorphine maintenance. He has an interest in substance use in pregnancy and the medical complications of addiction. He also works with the Baltimore City Department of Health and the State Department of Health on opioid addiction treatment expansion, needle-exchange, opioid overdose prevention, and other harm reduction initiatives. He is a consultant with the Maryland Addiction Consultation Service (MACS) and MACS for MOMS. He has also worked in Kenya and Zambia to setup opioid addiction treatment programs. He is involved with training of healthcare professionals in various addiction-related areas. He is also the Medical Director of the Maryland State Center of Excellence on Problem Gambling.