Course

Christine Khaikin leads LAC’s New York State-based policy advocacy to expand access to treatment and harm reduction strategies for people who use drugs, people in addiction treatment and recovery, and people living with HIV with a focus on access to Medications for Addiction Treatment (MAT), public and private insurance coverage, and harm reduction services. Christine received her JD from Brooklyn Law School.

Zina Huxley-Reicher, MD is currently a primary care and addiction medicine provider at Health + Hospitals/Woodhull where she is the clinical lead for primary care substance use integration. Prior to this role she completed an addiction medicine fellow at Montefiore Medical Center and Internal Medicine and Primary Care residency at Yale New Haven Health. Her introduction to caring for folks who use substances came before her time in medical school at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, when she worked for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on overdose prevention and naloxone distribution projects. Over the years her work has focused on providing care to those who use substances in a large variety of settings as well as the care of those returning home from jail and prison. She is passionate about improving access to substance use care, improving policies at all levels to allow our systems to better care for those individuals and partnering with communities to include and empower patients in their own care.

Reuben Strayer, author of emupdates.com, is an emergency physician and addiction physician based in Brooklyn. His clinical areas of interest include airway management, analgesia, substance use disorders, procedural sedation, agitation, decision-making and error. His extra-clinical areas of interest include sweeping generalizations and jalapeño peppers. He lures himself out of bed with chocolate dipped in peanut butter before heading to Maimonides Medical Center, where he is happily employed.

Linda Wang, MD is a general internist and addiction medicine specialist who cares for people who use drugs at the REACH Program at Mount Sinai, where she also directs the buprenorphine treatment program. She received her medical degree from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and completed internal medicine residency and chief residency in the Primary Care and Social Internal Medicine Program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. She is the Medical Director for the Mount Sinai Hepatitis C and Drug User Health Center of Excellence, which is funded by the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute. She is the Chair of the New York State Drug User Health Working Group. She is an active clinician educator who is interested in expanding access to substance use disorder treatment, providing stigma-free care for people who use drugs, and training current and future clinicians in drug user health.

Karl Williams, R. Ph, JD is Clinical Professor of Pharmacy Ethics and Law at University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Williams earned his B.S. in Pharmacy from the University at Buffalo, an M.S. from the University of Rochester Toxicology Training Program, J.D. from the University of Kentucky, and MBA from St John Fisher University.  He holds licenses to practice pharmacy in New York, Kentucky, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Virginia, and admitted to the practice of law in New York and Kentucky. Professor Williams has delivered over 300 scholarly works and presentations. Topics include patient safety, opioid use disorder, risk minimization, professional practice, civil rights, labor, ethical corporate management, and education.

Mike Winer, MD is the Associate Medical Director of Addiction Medicine at Kings County Hospital (NYC Health + Hospitals). His career is dedicated to the intersection of public health and health system transformation. While at Oregon Health and Sciences University, Mike spearheaded a landmark initiative as the first in the nation to implement methadone initiation at a detox site via the "72-hour rule"—a move that expanded critical access to care. Today, he continues to focus on evolving how system transformation can lower barriers to treatment entry.