About Me

I am the Executive Director of the Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Pain Service Line. The Pain and Spine Specialists of this clinical service line provide comprehensive care for patients throughout our region and across the United States. Our physicians and advanced practice providers take care of patients with pain from spine (back pain, neck pain, 'slipped' or herniated discs, sacroiliac joint pain, etc), nerve (painful diabetic neuropathy, 'sciatica', etc), musculoskeletal (knee pain, hip pain, osteoarthritis) and cancer origins. We treat pain with a multidisciplinary approach to care, our faculty are specialists in pain and spine medicine with backgrounds in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR), Anesthesiology, Neurology and Pain Psychology. We also work closely with therapists in physical and occupational health to ensure you receive the correct diagnosis the first time.

I completed my Anesthesiology Residency and Pain Medicine Fellowship training at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Following my faculty leadership roles at Johns Hopkins, the University of Florida, and the Medical College of Wisconsin, I was recruited by the Wake Forest School of Medicine faculty in the Department of Anesthesiology in 2017 to redevelop and lead pain and non-operative spine services across the health system. 

I have a robust research background. Early in my career, I transitioned from basic science research training in pain neurobiology to an active clinical translational and clinical informatics research program funded by numerous NIH, AHRQ, DOD, and industry sponsors. The many facets of this work at Wake Forest School of Medicine naturally connect me across the scientific and clinical realms to provide the most advanced clinical care available in the Unites States. Recently, I have become the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Pain Medicine. This journal is the premier journal in the field of multidisciplinary pain and spine medicine. Although, I spend a great deal of my time on clinical care; I continue to publish articles and books on several pain and spine medicine topics.

I recently passed along the leadership of the Pain and Addiction Educational Thread in the Medical School and both the ACGME Pain Medicine Fellowship and the ACGME Addiction Medicine Fellowship to several of the Pain and Spine Specialist faculty. Although, I no longer lead these programs, I remain fully connected to the education of our next generation of physicians..