Deaths due to substance use disorder reached an all-time high in 2022. This epidemic took over 109,000, provisional data from the National Centers for Health Statistics.

Dr. Katzman has experience developing educational curriculum, including simulated cases, in best practices chronic pain, substance disorder and harm reduction for over two decades.

Topics include: Epidemics of Chronic Pain and Opioid Overdose Death, Non-Pharmacological Modalities for Pain, Safe Opioid Prescribing, How to Safely Manage Chronic Pain, Intersection of Chronic Pain, Mental Health and Substance Use and Suicide, Harm Reduction Strategies for Opioid Use Disorders

She has presented this work internationally, including in Japan, Canada, and in many venues in the United States, such as the National Academy of Medicine, the Food and Drug Administration, and many academic medical centers.

While raising her children in New Mexico and on the Rio Grande, Dr. Katzman was a direct witness to the rising heat and the increased risk of drought. Urban heat islands and poverty were increasing in the Albuquerque area—it was not difficult to see the way climate destabilization was shaping the health of so many.

So in 2021, Dr. Katzman started the Climate Change and Human Health ECHO. She took a Yale School of Public Health Climate Change Certificate course, and she realized that she could begin an ECHO program to improve the communication skills of health professionals when it came to the impact of climate change. Today, over 5,000 health professionals have attended these programs. Those professionals have come from all 50 states and over 45 countries.

Curricular topics include the science of climate change, extreme heat, degraded air quality, mental health and eco-anxiety, environmental justice and health equity.

Police Officers, Fire Fighters, Paramedics and other frontline emergency responders have an incredibly challenging work life—they deal with people in times of incredibly high stress. They might encounter someone overdosing, they might find themselves caring for an injured child, or they are suddenly helping someone experiencing heat exhaustion. They may also be confronting existential threats to a community by battling a house fire or even a forest fire.

In 2019, Dr. Katzman created a curriculum to address the needs of First Responders: Burn-Out, Vicarious Trauma, Psychological First Aid, Self-Care, Fair Fighting, and Chronic Pain and Opioid Management in the Field.

Health Professionals receive relatively little or no training in patient-centered skills—that’s disappointing given its importance in clinical care. In fact, most clinicians do not feel prepared to talk to their patients about a broad range of topics, including vaccines, domestic violence, sexual health, gun safety, suicide, and death.

Proven studies demonstrate that patient-centered care—which includes active listening, empathy, and compassionate communication—is associated with increased patient satisfaction, improved outcomes, and decreased medical-legal issues.

Dr. Katzman works with a team of clinicians to train community health workers, primary care clinicians, and behavioral health providers on a range of topics, including patient-centered care, the importance of storytelling, mentalization-based techniques, and non-verbal cues.

There are multiple drivers of violence in our communities today: substance use, poverty, homelessness, environmental injustice, and poor access to healthcare, to name a few. Domestic and interpersonal violence, as well as suicide, are the leading causes of gun-related deaths in the US.

Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children ages 1-18 years. Dr. Katzman has collaborated with nationally regarded experts to develop educational curriculum including the epidemiology of gun violence, domestic violence, substance use and deaths of despair, loneliness, environmental injustice, trauma-informed care, gun locks and weapon storage, and Extreme Risk Protection Orders.

Suicides and drug overdoses reached an all-time high in the US in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) can increase the risk for depression, chronic pain, suicide, and substance use disorders in adolescence and into adulthood.

Healthcare professionals need to identify children who are most at risk for developing ACES. It is critical to educate doctors, nurses, teachers, and school-based health center staff in a wide variety of areas: attachment, social determinants to health, ACES screening methods, identifying youth with depression and suicidal behavior, protective measures, trauma-informed care, mental health, substance use disorders identification, and chronic pain disorders found in children and adolescents. Dr. Katzman has developed a specific curriculum for all of these areas.