Justine Welsh, MD, is a Child/Adolescent and Addiction Psychiatrist, Director of the Emory Healthcare Addiction Services, and Medical Director of the Addiction Alliance of Georgia. Dr. Welsh completed her training in general psychiatry at Emory University Medical School. She subsequently completed her child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, and an addiction psychiatry fellowship through Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Welsh’s area of clinical focus and research is in the treatment and prevention of adolescent substance use disorders, as well as opioid use in young adults. She has been the recipient of grant funding from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Santosh Patel, MD, is an Addiction Psychiatrist at Emory Healthcare and the Medical Director of the Intensive Outpatient Program at the Addiction Alliance of Georgia. Dr. Patel completed his training in general psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia, where he served as Chief Resident in his final year. After residency he completed his addiction psychiatry fellowship at Emory University. Alongside training in addiction psychiatry, Dr. Patel also has additional certification in the specialty of sports psychiatry through the International Society of Sports Psychiatry and has worked with a wide range of professional and amateur athletes. Dr. Patel’s professional interests focus on the identification and prevention of substance use disorders in adults and the development of evidenced based treatment programs focused on improving patient engagement and preventing relapse.
Joseph Mathias, MD, is an Addiction Psychiatrist at Emory Healthcare and Associate Director of Outpatient Programs at the Addiction Alliance of Georgia. Dr. Mathias completed his training in General Psychiatry at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He started to develop an interest in addiction treatment during residency as his local community in Western Massachusetts suffered greatly due to the opioid epidemic. He served as Chief Resident his final year of residency and helped treat patients with opioid use disorder at Berkshire County’s community mental health buprenorphine clinic. Following residency, Dr. Mathias completed his Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship at Emory University. Dr. Mathias has particular interest in the treatment and prevention of substance use disorders in adolescents/young adults. He is also actively involved in residency and fellowship education.
Kallio Hunnicutt-Ferguson, PhD, received her Bachelor of Science in Child and Family Development and Psychology from the University of Georgia and completed her PhD in clinical psychology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, IL. Dr. Hunnicutt has worked with individuals with substance use disorders in residential and outpatient settings and specializes in providing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to adults with substance use disorders and co-occurring mood and anxiety problems. Prior to joining the Emory University School of Medicine Faculty in 2017, Dr. Hunnicutt worked as the PTSD/Substance Use Disorder psychologist at the James J. Peters VA in Bronx, NY. Dr. Hunnicutt is actively involved in research focused on enhancing therapeutic outcomes for substance use disorders in women and is involved in residency and psychology graduate student education.
Samantha Patton, PhD, completed her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Louisville in Louisville, KY where her graduate research focused on emotional and physiological factors that influence symptom trajectory following trauma exposure, particularly in women. She completed her clinical internship at the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Healthcare System in New Orleans, LA, and her postdoctoral fellowship at Emory with the Emory Healthcare Veterans Program, where she gained further training in the evidence-based treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and comorbid disorders. Dr. Patton is passionate about providing evidence-based treatment and specializes in treatment of PTSD, substance use disorders and related problems. Her research interests focus on factors impacting symptom development, treatment outcomes and maintenance of treatment gains.
Rex Foster, MD, is a board-certified anesthesiologist with subspecialty certifications in Critical Care Medicine, and Pain Management. He has been in private practice in the Atlanta area for over 30 years. He is also board certified in Addiction Medicine by the American Board of Preventative Medicine after recently completing an Addiction Medicine fellowship at the University of Florida. His primary interest is treating patients with co-occurring chronic pain and substance use disorders.
Siara Sitar, MS, is the research coordinator for Emory Healthcare Addiction Services in partnership with the Addiction Alliance of Georgia. She earned a BS in Psychology as well as a BA in Criminal Justice from the University of Georgia in 2018, and a MS in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019. Her interests center around the treatment and prevention of substance use disorders in marginalized populations of young adults and adolescents, as well as the intersections of substance use, violence and the criminal justice system.
Andy Gish is a Board Certified Emergency Room Nurse and the Addiction Nurse at Emory Addiction Services. She completed her training at Emory’s Nell Hodgkins School of Nursing where she served as class president. In 2014, Andy helped pass Georgia’s Medical Amnesty Law “Don’t Run, Call 911,” which allows statewide access to Narcan/Naloxone and provides legal protections to victims experiencing an overdose. Andy does community outreach with Georgia Overdose Prevention, equipping restaurants and bars with naloxone. This has resulted in over 5,000 community overdose reversals. She is also a guest lecturer at Emory University where her focus is on teaching providers how to offer compassionate open-minded care to de-stigmatize patients suffering from substance use disorder. In 2018, Andy was named one of the Top 10 Nurses in Georgia for her work in Overdose Prevention. That year she was also given a Commander’s Challenge Coin from the office of the Surgeon General for her work in Public Health. In 2020, she was presented with Emory’s Excellence in Nursing Award from the Alumni Association. Andy is a former anthropologist and primate researcher and is also a musician and published singer songwriter.
Elizabeth McCord was awarded her Doctorate in Medicine at LSU School of Medicine New Orleans in 2015. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry at Emory School of Medicine in 2020 and a fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine in 2022. Prior to starting her fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry, Dr. McCord was the Ambulatory Chief Resident for the Emory Internal Medicine Residency Program. Her primary clinical/scholarly focus is the treatment of addiction through an integrative approach developed from her background in both Internal Medicine and Psychiatry. Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including the Journal of ECT, Journal of the American College of Surgeons, and Journal of Surgery. She has presented her work at numerous conferences, both national and international, throughout her career. Both she and her husband were born in New Orleans, LA but have made Atlanta their permanent home.