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Dennis C. Turk, Ph.D.
John and Emma Bonica Endowed Chair in Anesthesiology and Pain Research
Professor, Department of Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine
Biography
Dr. Turk is the director of the Center for Pain Research on Impact, Measurement, & Effectiveness (C-PRIME) at UW Medicine. He was previously an associate professor of psychology at Yale University and a professor of psychiatry and anesthesiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where he also served as the director of the Pain Evaluation and Treatment Institute.
A charter member of the International Association for the Study of Pain and a founding member of the American Pain Society, Dr. Turk is a fellow of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, the Society of Behavioral Medicine and the American Psychological Association.
Dr. Turk has been active for many years in national and international organizations and is past president of the American Pain Society. He was a member of the Council of the International Association for the Study of Pain for six years, and he is a special government employee (advisor) to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research and the Center for Devices and Radiological Health).
Dr. Turk has received a number of awards, including the Award for Outstanding Scientific Contributions to Health Psychology from the American Psychological Association, the John C. Liebeskind Award for Career Contribution to Pain Research from the American Academy of Pain Management, and the Wilbert E. Fordyce Clinical Investigator Award from the American Pain Society. The latter recognizes “individual excellence and achievements in clinical pain scholarship and is given to a pain professional whose total career research achievements have contributed significantly to clinical practice.”
Dr. Turk is currently editor-in-chief of The Clinical Journal of Pain, co-chair of the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, & Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials (IMMPACT), and co-director of the Executive Committee for the Analgesic Clinical Trials Innovations, Opportunities, & Networks (ACTION) initiative — a public-private partnership with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Advancing Pain Research, Care, and Education.
Dr. Turk has contributed over 500 publications to the healthcare literature, and he has authored or edited 20 volumes on pain, chronic illness and clinical decision-making, including Chronic Pain: An Integrated Biobehavioral Approach (with H. Flor), The Pain Survival Guide: How to Reclaim Your Life (with F. Winter), the 4th edition of Raj’s Practical Management of Pain (with H. Benzon, J. Rathmell, C. Wu, and C. Argoff), and the 3rd edition of the Handbook of Pain Assessment (with R. Melzack).
Dr. Turk’s research has focused on the assessment and treatment of a range of chronic pain conditions (e.g., fibromyalgia, whiplash-associated disorders, headache, temporomandibular disorders), clinical trial design, comparative effectiveness research, subgroup identification and treatment matching, and coping and adaptation. Based on an international survey, published in The Pain Clinic in 2001, Dr. Turk was designated one of the 10 leading contributors to the field of pain.
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