Chief Science Advisor, Director, Associate Professor

Dr. Beth Darnall, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, and by courtesy, Psychiatry, and Behavioral Sciences. She is a pain psychologist and scientist. Her primary interests are in developing and investigating brief, low-cost, low-burden, accessible treatments that empower patients and reduce acute and chronic pain and associated burdens. Her ultimate goal is to rapidly scale access to evidence-based behavioral medicine for acute and chronic pain.

Dr. Darnall is a principal investigator of current NIH and PCORI-funded clinical trials that broadly investigate behavioral pain medicine and self-management strategies and voluntary patient-centered prescription opioid reduction. Her single-session, skills-based behavioral medicine class Empowered Relief is the subject of NIH clinical trials and McGill researchers are studying its efficacy in primary care clinics.