About Pooja Lagisetty, M.D.

Dr. Lagisetty’s research interests focus on culturally tailored behavioral interventions, social determinants, health disparities, neighborhood determinants of chronic diseases, and urban design. She is a primary care physician who provides medication assisted therapy (MAT) for opioid addiction to patients at the Ann Arbor VA, has studied the literature about MAT in primary care, and is involved in efforts to increase the number of primary care teams that provide MAT to patients as a way to combat the shortage of treatment options.

What You'll Learn

• How the pharmaceutical industry’s pressure on physicians contributed to a culture of overprescription
 
• The role of national guidelines in curbing excessive opioid prescription
 
• The spectrum of opioid use
 
• How to identify risk factors for opioid misuse in yourself and others
 
• Drugs that can amplify the likelihood of opioid misuse
 
• Practical challenges for physicians in screening patients for opioid disorders
 
• What is Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT), and what advantages can it provide for treating opioid disorders?
 
• Factors that contribute to the scarcity of Medically-Assisted Therapy
 
• How cultural stigmas around opioid disorder treatment affect both patients and physicians
 
• How the opioid epidemic is replicated in other international contexts
 
• How cultural acceptance of pain differs across societies
 
• The need for physicians to shift from measuring “pain” to measuring “functionality”