Associate Professor
Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
Addictions; Family Medicine
I am a member of the Division of General Internal Medicine, which consists of a team of dedicated professionals providing exceptional preventive care, acute care, and chronic disease management for adults across the entire spectrum of health and disease. I work closely with and supervise University at Buffalo students and residents in their care of patients at the Internal Medicine Center at ECMC and in the care of hospitalized patients at ECMC.
I am also engaged in research on alcoholism and alcohol-related disease, including the detection and treatment of these commonly encountered conditions in medical settings. Alcohol-related problems are often unrecognized due to a lack of specific diagnostic testing or simply not linking heavy drinking to problems that are not always or not usually alcohol-related (e.g., hypertension). If alcohol is recognized as a problem, tools to treat alcoholism have not typically been adapted for primary care nor have many physicians received specific training in managing alcoholism.
With the support of the National Institutes of Health and other organizations, I conduct cutting-edge research on the assessment and treatment of patients with alcohol-related disease using brief counseling methods and medications that are appropriate for primary care practices. I am also heavily involved in studying the use of novel laboratory tests for detecting unhealthy drinking patterns and alcohol-related organ damage.
My goal as a clinical researcher is to provide tools that enable physicians to provide care for alcohol-related disorders as they do for other chronic diseases such as diabetes and high cholesterol. This includes the use of laboratory tests to monitor control of the disease, guide the use of medications and brief counseling in busy medical settings, and determine the need for more intensive treatment or referral to addiction specialists.