Lonnie Zeltzer, MD, Distinguished Research Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, is past-Director of the UCLA Pediatric Pain and Palliative Care Program and heads the pain research program. She was an invited member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Pain Care, Research, and Education and is a co-author on the IOM report on Transforming Pain in America, prepared at the request of Congress. She has received many awards, including a William T Grant Faculty Scholar’s Award, a National Cancer Institute Research Career Development Award, the 2003 UCLA Helene Brown Award for Excellence in Cancer Control Research, a 2005 Mayday Pain and Policy Fellowship, and the 2005 Jeffrey Lawson Award for Advocacy in Children’s Pain Relief from the American Pain Society (APS). Her UCLA pain program received a 2009 Clinical Center of Excellence in Pain Management Award from the APS.
Dr. Zeltzer was President of the Special Interest Group on Pain in Childhood in the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and past-Secretary of the APS. She was an invited member of the Steering Committee commissioned by Congress to guide the NIH on directions for pain research, is an invited member of the FDA Special Committee on Analgesia, Anesthesia, and Addiction, the NIH National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute’s Expert Committee on Hemoglobinopathies as a pain expert, and an invited steering committee member of the CDC’s Committee on Opioids. She has over 400 publications, including her most recent book, “Pain in Children and Young Adults: The Journey back to Normal” (Zeltzer and Zeltzer, Shilysca Press, Inc., 2016). She has founded a non-profit dedicated to education, peer support, and mind-body experiences for youth in pain and for their parents: Creative Healing for Youth in Pain (www.mychyp.com).