Pain Day

Hance Clarke is the Director of Pain Services at the Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network. He is also a staff anesthesiologist at the University Health Network and is the Medical Director of the Pain Research Unit at the Toronto General Hospital. He was recently awarded the Canadian Pain Society Early Career Research Award and was recognized nationally for his research and his improvements to patient care such as the development of the novel Transitional Pain Program. His research interests include studying the genetics of acute and chronic pain after surgery, and identifying risk factors associated with continued opioid use and poor health related quality of life after major surgery.

Dr. Joel Katz is a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology and Canada Research Chair in Health Psychology at York University in Toronto. He is the Research Director of the Pain Research Unit, Department of Anesthesia and Pain Management at the Toronto General Hospital and a Professor in the Department of Anesthesia at the University of Toronto. He is the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of the new Canadian Journal of Pain, the official journal of the Canadian Pain Society and serves on the Editorial Board of several other journals.  Dr. Katz has received many awards including the Distinguished Career Award from the Canadian Pain Society. His research program is aimed, broadly, at understanding the psychological, emotional, and biomedical factors involved in acute and chronic pain.  

Dr. Aliza Weinrib serves as lead clinical psychologist for the innovative post-surgical Transitional Pain Service at Toronto General Hospital, as well as the Interventional Pain Service at Toronto Western Hospital.  She is chair-elect of the Ontario Association for Contextual Behavioral Science for practitioners of acceptance and commitment therapy and co-chair of the Canadian Psychological Association opioid task force.

Dr. Drakes obtained his medical degree from the University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus in 2006. In July 2010 he started his postgraduate training at Montefiore Medical Center-Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. He spent five years there as he did a year’s internship in General Surgery, his three year residency in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and one year in Sports Medicine Fellowship. He has taught several workshops in the use of diagnostic musculoskeletal ultrasound, including at the annual conference of the American Academy of Physical Medicine &Rehabilitation.

Dr Drakes has been in private practice at The Wellness Clinic in Bay Street, Barbados since September 2015. He sees patients with a variety of rehabilitation needs but his special interests are musculoskeletal injuries, sports medicine, diagnostic musculoskeletal ultrasound and electrodiagnostic studies. Dr Drakes is an active member of the Barbados Sports Medicine Association and is a fan of sporting activities in general, with cricket and track and field being amongst his favourites.

Dr. Soneji completed his medical training and anesthesia residency at the University of Toronto. He completed a fellowship in chronic pain management at the University Health Network and Wasser Pain Management Centre-Mt. Sinai Hospital. He now works at the University Health Network and Women’s College Hospital where he specializes in the management of acute and chronic pain with a particular interest in ultrasound-guided interventions for musculoskeletal pain.

Dr Mark Ware is an Associate Professor in Family Medicine and Anesthesia at McGill University. He is also Director of Clinical Research of the Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) and Co-Director of the Quebec Pain Research Network.  Dr Ware is  the Executive Director of the non-profit Canadian Consortium for the Investigation of Cannabinoids. Dr. Ware’s primary research interests are in evaluating the safety and effectiveness of medicines derived from cannabis (cannabinoids). He is involved in population-based studies of the impact of pain on the population, and the evaluation of complementary therapies in pain and symptom management. 

Dr Laksmi Kotra is a Professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Senior Scientist, Toronto General Hospital Research Institute and Multi-Organ Transplant Program, and Director, Center for Molecular Design and Preformulations, University Health Network, Toronto. Dr. Kotra is an academic entrepreneur with expertise in drug discovery and development. Kotra group specializes in the areas of medicinal chemistry, preclinical and clinical development of small molecule and natural product-based drugs. Dr. Kotra is a recipient of several awards including the Premier’s Research Excellence Award from the Province of Ontario (Canada), Rx&D Health Research Foundation Research Career award, GlaxoSmithKline/Canadian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences Young Investigator Award. He is the co-founder of CannScience Innovations, Inc., Toronto, Canada (now Scientus Pharma, Inc.; novel cannabinoid products for medical uses, 2014-17). He serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Scientus Pharma Inc. (Toronto) where he maintains Chief Scientific Officer role.

Dr. Harpreet Sangha is a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.  He is a licentiate of the Medical Council of Canada and certified by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.  Dr. Sangha is a Diplomat of the Canadian Society of Clinical Neurophysiologists in EMG (Dip. CSCN - EMG). He has additional fellowship training in Pain Medicine from the University of Toronto, Department of Anesthesia. Dr. Sangha currently holds a full-time clinical appointment at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, a University of Toronto Teaching and Research Hospital, where he has dual appointments on both the Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation Program and Neuro-Rehabilitation services.  Dr. Sangha has a full-time academic appointment as an Assistant Professor (clinician-teacher) at the University of Toronto.