Julio Nunes, MD, a second-year resident, has been chosen to receive a 2023 Diversity Scholars Travel Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Office of Diversity and Health Disparities.
The $1,500 award will help defray the cost for Nunes to attend and present at the National Hispanic Science Network International Conference September 21-23 in Washington, DC.
For his presentation, Nunes will discuss how race-related stress is a missing piece in the research integrating chronic pain and opioid use disorder.
“As the biopsychosocial model further informs clinical care and research in psychiatry and other areas, it is important to consider how one’s identity may influence their experience of disease,” Nunes said. “For pain research, it is known that racism may worsen outcomes, but there is no specific data about how this may correlate with opioid use disorder and the opioid crisis.”
For this award, Nunes was mentored by Joao De Aquino, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry, at the Pain and Addiction Interaction Neurosciences (PAIN) Laboratory.