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Department of Family and Community Medicine welcomes Zgierska as vice chair for research

The Department of Family and Community Medicine at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pa., welcomes Aleksandra Zgierska, MD, PHD, DFASAM, as its new vice chair for research.

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Aleksandra Zgierska, MD, PHD, DFASAM, is joining Penn State College of Medicine’s Department of Family and Community Medicine as vice chair for research. Dr. Zgierska is a family medicine and addiction medicine physician whose work blends primary and specialty addiction care with education, research and advocacy.

Dr. Zgierska is a family medicine and addiction medicine physician whose work blends primary and specialty addiction care with education, advocacy and research centered on reducing the impact of addiction and chronic pain and opioid-related harms.

She first published her interests during a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded fellowship program in clinical research and completed a pilot study, which enabled her to compete successfully in 2009 for a NIH-funded K23 Career Development Award. Since that time, her research has applied diverse methodologies and focused on developing, testing and implementing innovative approaches to address substantial public health challenges – addiction, chronic pain and opioid-related harms. These approaches have included mindfulness meditation and other behavioral therapies, and clinician education-focused interventions to improve opioid prescribing practices, increase patient access to addiction care and reduce opioid-related harms.

She has grown her research program as principal or lead investigator for studies funded by NIH, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the U.S. Department of Justice and the Pfizer Corporation. She has participated as co-investigator or consultant on numerous other funded grants collaborating across disciplines with colleagues across the United States.

Zgierska served as the president of the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), is an ex officio member of the ASAM Board of Directors, and co-chairs the ASAM Chapters’ Council and the American Academy of Pain Medicine Substance Use Disorders Interest Group.

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