UB Medicine Podcast
Listen to the podcast where transformation meets innovation in health care. Broadcasting from the heart of downtown Buffalo, NY, this exciting series dives deep into the evolving landscape of health and wellness in Western New York.
Episode 12 – Addiction & Emergency Medicine: Innovation, Access and Changing the Standard of Care
The addiction crisis continues to evolve rapidly. The drug supply is growing increasingly unpredictable, with potent synthetic opioids and adulterants like xylazine and medetomidine contributing to overdose risk across populations. Western New York remains profoundly affected. Erie County reported nearly 400 overdose deaths in 2023, making it the deadliest year on record.
Podcast host Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, welcomes two experts in addiction and emergency medicine to discuss how emergency medicine–led innovations are reshaping access to care at a moment when both national trends and local realities demand urgent, coordinated response.
Joshua J. Lynch, DO, is a nationally recognized leader in emergency department-initiated medication-assisted treatment, he founded the MATTERS network in 2016, which links patients from emergency departments, jails, and community organizations to rapid-access treatment across New York State, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Brian Clemency, DO, professor of emergency medicine, is an authority in EMS and prehospital care. He has helped modernize overdose response protocols at a time when synthetic opioid potency and polysubstance involvement continue to intensify nationally and in Western New York.
Check Out Past Episodes
Missed an episode? Tune in to powerful past discussions to discover how Western New York is becoming a hub for health transformation.
Each episode of UB Medicine features candid, insightful conversations with the region’s most respected doctors, medical pioneers and wellness advocates who are redefining what it means to be healthy in today’s world.
Covering a range of themes, episodes of the UB Medicine podcast bring you stories that inspire, inform and empower. Whether you’re a health care professional or someone just looking to live better, this podcast offers real talk, expert opinions, a few surprises, and a local lens on the national health conversation.
Visionary leader Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, hosts the UB Medicine podcast. She is an internationally recognized neurologist, accomplished researcher and health science administrator. Brashear was appointed vice president for health sciences at the University at Buffalo and dean of the Jacobs School in December 2021.
She also leads the strategic integration of interprofessional education and practice, health sciences collaborative research, and clinical programs across the university’s health science schools — the Jacobs school, dental medicine, nursing, pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences, public health and health professions — as well as programs among our hospital and clinical affiliates.
Brashear is an internationally renowned researcher in movement disorders and an expert in ATP1A3-related diseases, a spectrum of rare neurologic disorders. Additionally, she is a powerful advocate for promoting diverse leaders in medicine and a lifelong champion of advancing women’s leadership in medicine.
She is committed to educating the next generation of medical doctors and research scientists, exploring areas of clinically impactful and cutting-edge discovery science, conducting impactful research, and cultivating relationships through community involvement.