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2026 Award Recipient

James F. Callahan, DPA 

The 2026 winner, Dr. Callahan, is a former executive vice president of the American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM), the ABAM Foundation, and the former executive vice president and CEO of ASAM. The award recognizes his significant contributions to the Society and his role in helping addiction medicine achieve recognition as a subspecialty by the American Board of Medical Specialties. Dr. Callahan is also a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s (NIDA) Career Teacher Program for the development of medical school faculty and curricula in addiction medicine, a collaborative program with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.  

2026 Award Recipient

Nicholas Athanasiou, MD, MBA, DFASAM

Nicholas Athanasiou is a supervising mental health psychiatrist with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (LAC – DMH) and a Health Sciences Associate Clinical Professor with the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA. As a faculty member of the UCLA – Olive View Psychiatry Residency Training Program, he oversees clinical and educational experiences in addiction medicine for psychiatric residents and trainees. In his clinical work, he treats individuals with co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders. He has made significant contributions to field of addiction medicine through his work as Editor in Chief of the ASAM Weekly. He also served on the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology’s Addiction Psychiatry Examination Writing Committee and is currently a member of the LAC – DMH Continuing Medical Â鶹Çø committee. 

2026 Award Recipient

Joshua D Lee, MD, MSc

Joshua D Lee is a Professor in the Department of Population Health and the Department of Medicine and Division of General Internal Medicine and Clinical Innovation at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He is an addiction medicine clinician and researcher focused on alcohol and opioid use disorder medications in primary care and criminal legal settings and has worked extensively in the NIDA Clinical Trials Network and the Justice Community Overdose Innovation Network. He is Program Director of the NYULH Addiction Medicine Fellowship, the NYU Multidisciplinary Addiction Training Program, and Co-Director of Population Health’s Section on Tobacco, Alcohol, and Drug Use. He practices primary care and addiction medicine at Bellevue Hospital.

2026 Award Recipient

Donald "Bailey" Miles, MD, MPH, FACP

Donald “Bailey” Miles is an internist and addiction medicine physician currently serving as Acting Chief of Primary Care at the Chinle Comprehensive Health Care Facility of the Indian Health Service in Chinle, Arizona. His clinical and leadership work focuses on integrating evidence-based addiction treatment into primary care and improving access to care in rural and Native communities. 

2026 Award Recipient

Carolyn A. Chan, MD, MHS-MEd
 

Carolyn A. Chan is a board-certified internist and addiction medicine physician. She serves as Program Director of the University of Cincinnati Addiction Medicine Fellowship and as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, with dual appointments in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, and Internal Medicine. As program director, Dr. Chan has been instrumental in developing a rigorous, fellowship that prepares physicians to deliver evidence-based, compassionate care for patients with substance use disorders across care settings. She co-hosts The Curbsiders Addiction Medicine Podcast, a nationally recognized podcast for evidence-based addiction education.

2026 Award Recipient

Shawn Ryan, MD, MBA, FASAM
 

Dr. Shawn Ryan is the Co-Founder, and President of Brightview. For over 12 years, Dr. Ryan practiced Emergency Medicine in the Greater Cincinnati area. During that time, he functioned as a hospital administrator for Mercy Health (Department Chairman of Quality and Patient Safety). While at Mercy Health, he saw how heroin/opioid misuse affected communities and worked tirelessly to help resolve it. He serves on regional, state, and national committees/workgroups focused on turning the tide of this epidemic. He is the past president of the Ohio Society of Addiction Medicine and the immediate past Chair of the Legislative Advocacy Committee for ASAM. A board-certified addiction specialist and a board-certified emergency physician, Dr. Ryan trained in emergency medicine at the University of Cincinnati and simultaneously obtained his MBA while completing his residency. 

2026 Award Recipient

Aneri Pattani

Aneri Pattani is a senior correspondent at KFF Health News, a national nonprofit outlet, where she covers mental health, suicide, and substance use. She produces text and audio stories, and has been heard on NPR and Science Friday. Her multi-year series about how state and local governments are spending billions in opioid settlement funds made her a finalist for the Livingston Award and the Scripps Howard Award.  

The series was also featured on an episode of the late-night comedy show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Pattani was a 2019 recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism and now serves on the fellowship’s advisory board. While pursuing her master’s in public health at Johns Hopkins University, she co-authored a free online course to teach journalists how to responsibly cover suicide.  

2026 Award Recipient

John F. Kelly, PhD, ABPP

John F. Kelly is the Elizabeth R. Spallin Professor of Psychiatry in Addiction Medicine at Harvard Medical School and serves as Chief of the Division of Addiction Treatment and Prevention across Mass General Brigham Academic Medical Centers in Psychiatry. He is also the founding director of the Recovery Research Institute. An internationally recognized clinical investigator, Dr. Kelly’s work focuses on addiction treatment, mechanisms and recovery processes, mutual-help organizations, and reducing stigma. He has authored hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and has led major NIH and other funded studies advancing evidence-based care within recovery-oriented systems. Dr. Kelly is President of the American Board of Addiction Psychology and a leading voice in addiction science, clinical training, and health policy.