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.
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 and research centered on reducing opioid-related harms.
She pursued her interest 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 focused on developing, testing and implementing innovative therapies to address two substantial public health challenges – addiction and opioid-treated chronic non-cancer pain. These therapies include the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation and ways to reduce opioid-related harms by improving opioid prescribing practices and increasing patient access to addiction care.
She has grown her research program as principal investigator or project director for studies funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the U.S. Department of Justice and the Pfizer Corporation and focused on improving outcomes in those affected by addiction or opioid-treated pain. She has participated as co-investigator or consultant on 10 other funded grants, collaborating across disciplines with colleagues at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health, School of Nursing and departments of psychology and industrial engineering, and with colleagues from other institutions.
Since the beginning of 2012, these efforts have resulted in nine first-authored and 15 collaborative publications published in peer-reviewed journals.
Dr. Zgierska is attending the North American Primary Care Research Group Annual Conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where one of her trainees will present a poster Nov. 19 on “Relief for Back Pain: A Qualitative Study of What Helps People with Opioid-Treated Chronic Low Back Pain.”
