Opioid overdose specialist to discuss harm reduction

04/05/2022 

Opioid addiction is taking a devastating toll across the nation and in our region. Traditional efforts stressing rehabilitation and lifetime abstinence frequently fail, leaving caregivers looking for ways to reduce the pain and death of addicted opioid users.

Judith Griffin, M.D., an Ithaca, N.Y.-area physician who works directly with patients and medical professionals who are grappling with the epidemic, will share her experiences on the harm reduction front of the opioid battle on Thursday, April 14, at SUNY Cortland,

Griffin, who works as a primary care physician and prescriber of buprenorphine — a less addictive and harmful drug used to dampen opioid cravings — at The REACH Project, Inc., in Ithaca, will begin the hybrid in-person and virtual talk at 5 p.m.  

The live and virtual events are free and open to the public. The in-person  talk will take place in Old Main Brown Auditorium. It can also be live-streamed at the 2022 Poskanzer website.

Griffin’s presentation, “Addressing the Opioid Overdose Crisis Through A Harm Reduction, Health Equity Approach: Experiences From REACH Medical,” represents the 14th Charles N. Poskanzer Lecture, sponsored by SUNY Cortland’s Health Department.

Griffin currently serves as the director of research at REACH. She also directs the Rural Health Equity Training Collaborative (RHETC) affiliated with Cayuga Medical Center. 

A core faculty member for the Cayuga Medical Center Internal Medicine Residency, Griffin holds an appointment as  clinical instructor in medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. 

Recently she was named to the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute Substance Use Guidelines Committee and also serves on the Criminal Justice-Alternatives to Incarceration Advisory Board for Tompkins County.

Griffin completed her medical degree at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and is board-certified in internal medicine and addiction medicine. Her residency training took place at the Primary Care and Social Internal Medicine Residency Program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y.

The event is supported by the Charles N. Poskanzer Fund, an endowment named in honor of the late SUNY Distinguished Service Professor emeritus who taught in the university’s Health Department for 40 years.

The Poskanzer fund was established through the Cortland College Foundation as an endowment to support an annual, public lecture offered by the university’s Health Department in honor of its retired colleague. Poskanzer died in 2010. The annual lecture allows the Health Department to bring national leaders in public and community health to campus to meet with students and faculty and to deliver a public lecture on a current public health issue.

For more information, contact organizer Kaamel Nuhu, M.D., SUNY Cortland assistant professor of health, at 607-753-2989.