Heeding the Call for Safe and Responsible Pain Management in Our Communities

Dr. Kevin Gebke has served as Chair of the Department of Family Medicine within Indiana University School of Medicine for the past nine years, and as a school faculty member for 17 years. He also functions as the service line leader of Primary Care for IU Health Physicians. He has been awarded numerous teaching and leadership accolades over the course of his career. He has been active within the school serving on countless committees and providing oversight for ongoing curriculum development. Dr. Gebke is currently a member of the IU Health Physicians Board of Directors and the Board of IU Medical Group Foundation. Last year, Dr. Gebke was elected to the position of Secretary of the Council of Clinical Chairs. Service to the school, the discipline, and to his patients continues to be the motivating force that drives Dr. Gebke. He maintains a busy Family and Sports Medicine practice and remains involved in the Primary Care Sports Medicine Fellowship that he directed for 14 years. LEAN process improvement and combatting physician burnout are two areas of focus for Dr. Gebke and the healthcare system as a whole.

Dr. Neil Skolnik, MD, is an academic family physician who sees patients and teaches residents and medical students in the family medicine residency program at Abington Jefferson Health in Abington, Pennsylvania. He is a Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and Associate Director of the Family Medicine Residency Program at Abington Jefferson Health. Dr. Skolnik graduated from Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, and completed his residency training at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. Dr. Skolnik has written and edited 5 books: On the Ledge: A Doctor’s Stories From the Inner City; Essential Practice Guidelines for Primary Care; Essential Infectious Disease Topics for Primary Care; Sexually Transmitted Diseases for Primary Care; and Electronic Medical Records: A Practical Guide for Primary Care. He served as series editor for fifteen years, overseeing the development of over twenty-five titles in the Humana Press Current Clinical Practice in Primary Care series of medical textbooks, and has published more than 300 articles, columns, poems, and essays in both the medical and lay literature on a diverse range of subjects including laboratory diagnosis, disease management, guideline-based medical care, handheld technology in medicine, electronic health records, and medical humanities. He serves on the Expert Panel Report 4 (EPR-4) Working Group, National Asthma Education and Prevention Program Coordinating Committee, National Heart Lung Blood Institute (NHLBI), and is on the Primary Care Advisory Committee for the American Diabetes Association. Dr. Skolnik lectures nationally on a range of topics, with a special interest in diabetes, asthma, COPD, exercise in medicine, and coronary disease risk factor management. He produces “Diabetes Core Update,” the American Diabetes Association’s monthly podcast, reviewing the most important new articles to come out in core journals for practicing clinicians, and hosts the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s Guideline Podcast series.

Steven P. Stanos, DO currently serves as Executive Medical Director of Rehabilitation and Performance Medicine, Swedish Pain Services at the Swedish Health System in Seattle, Washington. Aside from directing pain management services for the hospital system, he also leads Swedish’s pain rehabilitation center, Functional Restoration, an integral part of the pain medicine continuum of care. In addition to his work with Swedish Health System, he is active with committees work at Providence St. Joseph Health related to the system integration of pain management including primary and specialty care. Prior to joining Swedish and Providence, he served as medical director of the Center for Pain Management at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) Northwestern University Medical School from 2002-2014, and served as an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and program-co chair of the multidisciplinary pain fellowship.

Dr. Stanos is board certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation and pain medicine by the American Board of Pain Medicine and by the American Board of Anesthesia.

Dr. Stanos is a Past President of the American Academy of Pain Medicine and serves on the Board of Directors of the American Board of Pain Medicine. He served as a panel member on the Service Delivery and Reimbursement work group for the National Pain Strategy, an invited consultant to the CDC for the CDC Opioid Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, and as a work group member for Healthy People 2020 and Healthy People 2030. He is active with the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and has served as the co- chair of education for the Pain and Neuromuscular Council.

Dr. Stanos’s work also includes ongoing educational initiatives for primary care, pain medicine, and physical medicine specialists around the United States and abroad. Dr. Stanos has published numerous scientific articles and book chapters related to pain management. He has been involved in the development and publication of treatment guidelines related to rehabilitation approaches for chronic pain and low back pain conditions. He also serves on the editorial board for the journal Pain Medicine and as a reviewer for other pain and rehabilitation journals.

A Mayday Foundation Advocacy fellow in 2013, Dr. Stanos’s advocacy has continued to focus on increasing awareness and access for inter-disciplinary biopsychosocially-based pain care for patients suffering with chronic pain. In 2014, the University of Washington Department of Pain Medicine awarded Dr. Stanos with the John J. Bonica, MD lecture. He has appeared on CNN, National Public Radio, Fox News, regional print, and television news covering various topics related to pain medicine and pain rehabilitation.