Erik W. Gunderson MD

Dr. Gunderson is the Director and Founder of the Center for Wellness and Change. He also is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences and Department of Medicine at the University of Virginia (UVA), as well as an Adjunct Associate Research Scientist in the Division on Substance Abuse, Department of Psychiatry, of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. After completing medical school, internal medicine residency, and chief residency at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, he entered an Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship at Columbia University.
He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine. He is a national buprenorphine physician mentor through the Physician Clinical Support System for Medication Assisted Treatment of opioid use disorders (PCSS-MAT), and is a Fellow in the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
Dr. Gunderson's clinical and research interests have focused on treatment of opioid dependence, the interface between pain and substance use, integrating alcohol and other substance use disorder screening and intervention in primary care, medical education, and human behavioral psychopharmacology. Between 2003-2008, he was Medical Director of Columbia University's Buprenorphine Program, an outpatient program that specialized in the treatment of opioid dependence.
Also during this time, he was Medical Director of Columbia's Substance Use Research Center, a human behavioral pharmacology research laboratory. In 2008, he moved to Virginia and became Director of UVA's Clinical Pharmacological Research Unit in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences. He has received federal funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study the effectiveness of buprenorphine treatment of opioid dependence in primary care, as well U. S. Department of Health and Human Services funding from the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment to develop substance use curricula for physicians.