Finding Solutions Speaker Series

Joshua M. Sharfstein, MD, is Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, director of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, and Professor of the Practice in Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Previously, he served as the Secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Principal Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as Commissioner of Health for Baltimore City, and as health policy advisor for Congressman Henry A. Waxman. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Public Administration.

Maritza Perez, JD, is the Director of the Office of National Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance in Washington, DC where she leads the organization’s federal legislative agenda and strategy. Previously, she served as Senior Policy Analyst for Criminal Justice Reform at the Center for American Progress (CAP), as Legislative Staff Attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and before that, as Soros Justice Fellow, advocating for policies to end mass incarceration. She currently serves on the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect for the city of Washington, DC and sits on the Board of Directors of the Hispanic Bar Association of DC and the American Constitution Society (Washington, DC Lawyer Chapter).

The Crime of the Century, a two-part documentary, is a searing indictment of Big Pharma and the political operatives and government regulations that enable over-production, reckless distribution, and misuse of synthetic opiates. Exploring the origins, extent, and fallout of one of the most devastating public health tragedies of our time, with half a million deaths from overdoses this century alone, the film reveals that America’s opioid epidemic is not a public health crisis that came out of nowhere. Known for his cinematic, gripping, and deeply insightful documentaries, filmmaker and director of Crime of the Century, Alex Gibney, has won the Academy Award®, multiple Emmy Awards, the Grammy Award, and several other accolades. Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty.

An alumnus of the Clinton White House, Ryan Hampton has worked with multiple non-profits and national recovery advocacy campaigns on issues surrounding addiction, and served as part of the core team that released the first-ever U.S. Surgeon General's report on addiction in 2016. In recovery from a decade-long opioid addiction, he is now a prominent, leading face and voice of recovery advocacy and is working to changing the national conversation about addiction. In 2019, Hampton was named by Facebook as an inaugural leadership fellow and created the national advocacy initiative, Mobilize Recovery. Since its inception, Mobilize Recovery has recruited and trained over 2,000 new advocates from all 50 states focused on community-based solutions to end the addiction crisis.

Travis N. Rieder, PhD, is the Assistant Director for Education Initiatives, Director of the Master of Bioethics degree program and Research Scholar at the Berman Institute of Bioethics. He is also a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Public Health Advocacy within the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. A philosopher by training, bioethicist by profession, and communicator by passion, Dr. Rieder is also author of In Pain: A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids.

Edouard Coupet Jr., MD, MS, is a NIDA-sponsored Yale Drug Use, Addiction, and HIV Scholar (DARHS) and Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. His primary research interests are in the intersection between substance use & community violence and disparities in access to addiction treatment. Donald Stader III, MD, is an emergency physician, innovator & entrepreneur. He is Chair of the Colorado Naloxone Project and serves as the President-Elect on the Colorado ACEP Board of Directors and is the former President of the Emergency Medicine Resident's Association (EMRA). He is the is the Editor-in-Chief of their 2017 Opioid Prescribing & Treatment Guidelines and serves as the Senior Pain Management & Opioid Policy Advisor for the Colorado Hospital Association.

Gary Mendell, MBA, is the founder and CEO of Shatterproof, a national nonprofit focused on reversing the course of the addiction crisis in America. After losing his son Brian to addiction in 2011, Gary founded Shatterproof to spare other families the tragedy his had suffered. Since founding Shatterproof in 2012, Mr. Mendell has been a national leader in the addiction space creating solutions that will create more access to treatment for Opioid and Substance Use Disorders including the creation of the Shatterproof National Principles of Care to guide providers, payers, and patients to quality treatment. He advocates for state and federal policy changes, and most recently launched a national strategy and call to action to address stigma related to Opioid and Substance Use Disorders.