Cohort 9 RAM Scholars (2020-22)
Anees Bahji, MD, FRCPC
Addiction Psychiatry
BC Centre on Substance Use
Dr. Anees Bahji is currently an International Collaborative Addiction Medicine Research Fellow through the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in affiliation with the University of British Columbia. Last year, he completed a one-year Addiction Psychiatry clinical and research fellowship through the University of Calgary, where he is currently working as a part-time staff psychiatrist working in various addiction programs. Throughout medical school, residency and fellowship, Anees has developed a passion for addictions across domains, disciplines, and approaches. While his research interests are continuously evolving, he is looking to focus on cannabis research as this may harmonize well with his training as a psychiatrist. Anees is also returning to graduate school, with some courses planned for January 2021 in advance of a formal Ph.D. start date for September 2022 (anticipated).
Tommy Brothers, MD
Addiction Medicine
Dalhousie University
Dr. Tommy Brothers is a subspecialty resident, training in general internal medicine and addiction medicine at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is also a PhD student in epidemiology and public health at University College London, UK. His clinical and research work focuses on the prevention and treatment of medical complications of substance use, including the integration of addiction treatment and harm reduction into general medical settings. He co-leads an unofficial, trainee-run hospital inpatient addiction medicine consultation service and helped to organize Halifax’s first safe injection site.
Leah Harvey, MD, MPH
Addiction Medicine
Boston Medical Center
Dr. Leah Harvey is in her third year of a combined infectious disease and addiction medicine fellowship at Boston Medical Center in Boston, MA. Her research is focused on the infectious sequelae associated with injection drug use, particularly HIV and invasive bacterial infections, and in optimizing harm reduction strategies and adapting clinical treatment modalities to address health disparities and reach marginalized patients.
Robert Kleinman, MD
Addiction Psychiatry
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Dr. Robert Kleinman is an Assistant Professor and Clinician-Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto and a staff psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He is a graduate of Queen’s University School of Medicine, completed psychiatry residency at Stanford University, and completed an addiction psychiatry fellowship at Mass General Brigham. His research interests are in assessing the effectiveness of treatment strategies and pathways for substance use disorders and in expanding access to evidence-based treatments.
Kenisha Nisbett, DO
Addiction Medicine
Loma Linda University
Dr. Kenisha Nisbett is currently an Addiction Medicine Fellow at Loma Linda University in Southern California. Her research focuses on the veteran population at the VA Loma Linda Healthcare system. Dr. Nisbett plans to critically evaluate the needs of veterans with substance use disorders that are admitted to the Loma Linda VA hospital, and take this information to develop an inpatient SUD consultation service. The main goal is to determine and eliminate that gaps in treatment for veterans with substance use disorders.
Ashish Thakrar, MD
Addiction Medicine
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Dr. Ashish Thakrar is currently a fellow in the National Clinician Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Osler Training Program as part of the Urban Health-Primary Care track and Addiction Medicine fellowship at Johns Hopkins Bayview. During residency, he spearheaded a quality improvement project that more than doubled initiation of buprenorphine maintenance for hospitalized patients with opioid use disorder using a novel, resident-led Buprenorphine Bridge Team. His research and advocacy focuses on increasing access to treatment for opioid use disorder in the fentanyl era and on improving care for hospitalized patients with addiction.
Steph Weiss, MD, PhD
Addiction Medicine
NIDA IRP TAMB
Dr. Stephanie Weiss is the Staff Clinician serving the Translational Addiction Medicine Branch (TAMB) of the NIDA Intramural Research Program. Dr. Weiss earned her PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry prior to attending medical school and completing post-graduate training in emergency medicine and medical toxicology, a subspecialty that cares for patients with poisonings and overdoses. She subsequently completed a second fellowship in addiction medicine research at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Dr. Weiss’s research interests include novel psychoactive substances, medication misuse, and improving interpretation of urine drug testing. Her RAMS project involved analyzing the urine samples of trauma patients to determine the rate of false negatives in urine drug screens, as well as characterizing the classes of compounds that are being missed by relying on urine drug screens.