Presenter: Dr. Joji Suzuki is the founding Director of the Division of Addiction Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS). As an addiction psychiatrist on the psychiatric consultation service, his clinical work has consisted largely of conducting inpatient addiction consults in the hospital setting. He has also successfully launched numerous treatment programs, including the comprehensive outpatient addiction clinic at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, and the low-barrier, low-threshold, harm-reduction Bridge Clinic. He is the inaugural Program Director for the BWH Addiction Medicine Fellowship program, and continues to be very active in medical student, resident, and fellow education. He has received research funding continuously for the last decade from both public and private sources with an emphasis on research to improve the care of hospitalized patients with alcohol and opioid use disorders. He recently completed a NIH K23 Career Development Award to receive mentored training in conducting clinical trials. He is now a principal investigator on multiple NIH-funded clinical trials to evaluate novel pharmacologic and psychosocial treatments, with an emphasis on treating patients in the hospital and emergency department. He is a sought-out speaker both locally and nationally, and currently serves on a variety of committees, workgroups, and taskforces for Mass General Brigham, HMS, American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, and Academy of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry.

Description: This will be a one hour didactic on the rationale and evidence-base in support of treatment approaches that incorporate harm reduction principles.

Learning Objectives: 
1. Explain the basic neurobiology of substance use disorders

2. Describe the harm reduction approach in treating substance use disorders

3. Recognize the controversies surrounding harm reduction approaches