Dr. Patrick Gerard O’Connor, newly named as the Dan Adams and Amanda Adams Professor in General Medicine, is an internationally renowned physician-scientist whose research focuses on the interface between general internal medicine, primary care, and addiction.
O’Connor has conducted numerous National Institutes of Health clinical trials on topics such as the pharmacologic management of alcohol and opioid dependence in primary care and other general medical settings. His groundbreaking research includes the first randomized clinical trial of buprenorphine for the treatment of opioid dependence in primary care and of naltrexone for the treatment of alcohol dependence using primary care-based management approach. Office-based treatment with buprenorphine has since become the most prevalent form of opioid maintenance treatment in the United States, helping to revolutionize the treatment of addiction in the country. O’Connor and his colleagues have since become a leading research group nationally that studies innovative new models of treating addiction in general medical settings including, most recently, a study comparing “maintenance” and “detoxification” approaches to treating prescription drug abuse in primary care and another study which evaluated the expansion of the initiation of buprenorphine treatment into emergency department settings. He has nearly 200 publications including peer-reviewed articles in The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and The Annals of Internal Medicine, among other journals. O’Connor is currently a principal investigator on two NIH-funded grants that are designed to train physicians on research in addiction medicine.
The Yale professor has been a consultant to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and other federal, state, and private organizations. O’Connor served as president of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse, a national organization that focuses on education, research, and health policy. He is also a founding director of the American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM) and served as its president from 2014 to 2016. As ABAM president he co-hosted a White House symposium, “Medicine Responds to Addiction,” in September 2015, which brought together leaders in the federal government, organized medicine, and health policy with the goal of bringing addiction medicine forward as a high priority field within organized medicine. Subsequently, under his leadership as ABAM president, the American Board of Medical Specialties voted to approve the creation of the new subspecialty of addiction medicine in October 2015.
O’Connor has also participated in numerous international collaborations relating to addiction medicine and primary care and to the conduct of research more broadly. For several years he oversaw and participated in a series of collaborative research programs related to addiction and HIV disease in Russia and Poland. More recently, he has provided consultation and training to initiatives in clinical and translational research in China and the development of medical educational programs in addiction medicine in Vietnam.
O’Connor is a graduate of Union College and The Albany Medical College from which he received the 2015 Distinguished Alumnus Award. O’Connor came to Yale in 1986 after completing his residency training at the University of Rochester School of Medicine to join the Yale Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. There he received research training in clinical epidemiology and an M.P.H. degree from the Yale School of Medicine. In 1988 he joined the Yale faculty as assistant professor of internal medicine and was promoted to professor of medicine in 1998. He served as director of the Yale Primary Care Center from 1992 to 2002, when he was appointed chief of the Section of General Internal Medicine. He is also chief of the Generalist Firm at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
As chief of the Section of General Internal Medicine, O’Connor took over leadership of a group of 36 Yale faculty in 2002, which has since grown to over 100 clinician educators and physician scientists. General Internal Medicine faculty now oversee and support five primary care practices which provide care for approximately 75,000 patients in the greater New Haven area along with selected “specialized” clinical programs in areas such as occupational health, refugee health, women’s health, addiction, and chronic pain, along with inpatient general medical services at three hospitals. His faculty are also recognized as leading medical educators for trainees at all levels — frequently winning teaching awards at both at Yale and nationally.
O’Connor has also recruited a number of leading physician scientists who have supported the growth in General Internal Medicine’s research portfolio. His group’s research focuses on five chronic diseases: cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, HIV, and addiction, and also includes cross-cutting research programs in quality and patient safety, population health, health disparities, international health, health policy, clinical epidemiology, occupational and environmental medicine, medical education, medical ethics, and medicine and the humanities. Since O’Connor became chief, the annual research budget of his program has grown from approximately $2 million to as much as over $20 million per year.
O’Connor has received numerous national awards for his work including the Chief’s Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine for exceptional leadership, contributions, and accomplishments as a division chief, and the Mentor of the Year Award from the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse. In April 2016, he received The President’s Award from ABAM and The Addiction Medicine Foundation. He is also currently chair of the editorial board of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.