Meet the Doctor Connecting the Dots Between the Opioid Crisis and HIV: WATCH

Savas Abadsidis July 22, 2019

The head and founder of Prevention Access, Bruce Richman, who has tirelessly campaigned the message of Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U), interviewed Dr. Nora D. Volkow, M.D. at the International AIDS Conference (#IAS2019) occurring right now in Mexico City

Dr. Volkow is Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health and has been since May 2003. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction.

Dr. Volkow conducted groundbreaking research that has moved drug addiction science into mainstream medicine, demonstrating that addiction alters brain function and is a disease, not simply the result of poor judgment or personal weaknesses.

As director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) for the past decade, Volkow has used findings from cutting-edge research to promote the study and development of more effective intervention strategies to prevent and treat drug abuse and addiction. She has made significant strides to curb the intertwined epidemic of HIV/AIDS and drug addiction, worked to stem the high rates of prescription opioid abuse and explored innovative medication strategies to treat drug abuse and addiction.

“She’s taken the National Institute on Drug Abuse and made it a neuroscience institute,” said Dr. Larry Tabak, principal deputy director at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “She was an early proponent of the concept that addiction is a disease of the brain. This has had profound implications for our ability to identify people who are most at risk and develop evidence based interventions that work.”

Volkow tells Richman the latest tactics and execution of harm reduction campaigns in the United States.