Christopher W. Shanahan Honored by ACP

Christopher W. Shanahan, MD, MPH, FACP, has been awarded the American College of Physicians (ACP) Award for Distinguished Contributions to Behavioral Medicine. ACP is a national organization of internists.

Established by ACP’s Board of Regents in 2014, the award is presented for distinguished contributions to the integration of behavioral medicine with traditional medicine. This award recognizes an individual who has furthered the care of patients by recognizing the importance of caring for the whole patient, both mind and body. This can be through research or clinical innovations.

An assistant professor of medicine and director of the Community Medicine Unit at BUSM and Boston Medical Center (BMC), Dr. Shanahan is a primary care internist at Mattapan Community Health Center where he established a multidisciplinary Recovery Clinic to treat substance use disorders and manage chronic pain.

Dr. Shanahan has distinguished himself as a nationally recognized clinician-educator and scholar in the areas of addiction medicine and safer opioid prescribing. He worked at the Boston Public Health Commissions Opioid Treatment Program caring for disadvantaged patients suffering with opioid use disorders (OUD). He established the successful Transitional Opioid Program at BMC, which identified, engaged, and linked hospitalized out-of-treatment patients with OUD into addiction care. He was associate medical director for the Massachusetts Screening Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment Program, which screened over 170,000 patients for unhealthy substance use. This program was recognized as a “model program” by the White House’s 2011 National Drug Control Strategy. He teaches safer opioid prescribing after an era of unsafe prescribing had become the norm. His technological skills became an integral piece of the TOPCARE Program, a collaborative care approach to manage patients on chronic opioids by improving guideline-concordant care.

More recently he became the medical director for the Massachusetts Consultation Service for Treatment of Addiction and Pain, a program that helps physicians manage patients treated with opioids. He is also currently a co-investigator on the National Healing Communities Study. Dr. Shanahan has been a dedicated ACP member becoming a fellow in 2008 and serving on the Massachusetts Chapter Governor’s Council.

The American College of Physicians is the largest medical specialty organization in the United States with members in more than 145 countries worldwide. ACP membership includes 163,000 internal medicine physicians (internists), related subspecialists, and medical students. Internal medicine physicians are specialists who apply scientific knowledge and clinical expertise to the diagnosis, treatment, and compassionate care of adults across the spectrum from health to complex illness.