Vanila Singh, MD, MACM
President

Dr. Vanila Singh is an American physician, educator, policy maker, and patient advocate.  She has dedicated her career to clinical medicine and public health issues and is currently tackling one of the nation’s most widespread, expensive, and devastating epidemics of our time: the opioid and greater drug epidemic. As a double-board certified faculty physician in both anesthesiology and pain medicine, Dr. Singh has brought her background in molecular and cell biology and economics in understanding the underlying mechanisms of complex acute and chronic pain as well as other medical conditions. Dr. Singh has spent over 17 years at the Stanford University School of Medicine as a Clinical Associate Professor where her practice focuses on pain management, regional anesthesia and advanced ultrasound-guided procedures.

In 2017, Dr. Singh was appointed by the White House to serve as the Chief Medical Officer of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH). She was later concurrently appointed by the Assistant Secretary for Health as the Acting Regional Health Administrator for Region 9 (CA, NV, AZ, HI, and the Pacific Islands) and served dual leadership roles through her HHS tenure.

In her role as the U.S. Department of HHS Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Singh was integral in shaping the Department’s opioid policy recommendations. She served as Chairperson of the highly regarded Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force, for the CARA Legislative Act of 2016, where she brought together and led 29 expert Task Force members in pain medicine, addiction, mental health, minority health, Veterans’ health, as well as professional medical organizations representatives and respected members from FDA, CDC, NIH. Under her leadership, the Task Force submitted a comprehensive Report to the U.S. Congress on May 30th 2019, that received over 150 endorsements from various stakeholder organization, included over 500 scholarly references and 10,000 public comments, and utilized artificial intelligence/machine learning to analyze new and emerging trends in the pain management landscape.

Dr. Singh has received numerous awards and most recently is the recipient of the 2020 Distinguished Philipp M. Lippe, MD Award, given to a physician for outstanding contributions to both the social and political aspects of pain medicine.   She has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians 2018, and has been recognized as a woman in leadership.  She continues to provide news commentary locally and nationally on matters related to health care, policy, COVID, and other subjects. She is frequently invited to keynote and speak on her experiences and expert background.  Dr Singh sits on the board of various private, public and non-profit organizations.

Shalini Shah, MD, MBA
Immediate Past President

Shalini Shah, MD MBA, is an Associate Professor and Vice-Chair for the Department of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Care and Enterprise Director of Pain Services for University of California Irvine Health. Dr. Shah completed her residency in anesthesiology from Cornell University and a combined fellowship in adult and pediatric chronic pain at Harvard Medical School. She has been featured in Time Magazine, The Doctors, NBC Nightly News, Business Insider and is a frequent guest on NPR on the topic of safe pain care options. Dr Shah is an NIH- funded researcher with a focus on pediatric pain therapeutics. She completed her MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management with a certificate of distinction in finance and entrepreneurship. Dr. Shah is strongly committed to pain advocacy and healthcare regulatory reform both in the state of California and nationally to improve healthcare experiences for patients.

Sheri Albers, DO
Director-at-Large

Eric Grigsby, MD
Director-at-Large

Dr. Eric Grigsby, MD, MBA is Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Neurovations.  For over three decades, Dr. Grigsby has focused his clinical career on academia and private practice. Today, in addition to busy practices, surgery centers, education divisions and labs, Dr. Grigsby guides research and innovation at Neurovations.

Dr Grigsby has been seminally involved in the majority of the interventional devices and therapies used in the field of pain management. He guides start-ups and industry-leading companies through the innovation, discovery and clinical research process which includes access to sites for clinical investigation in pain and neurologic disease. 

The Neurovations Education division holds world-class programs and ACCME accredited conferences in Pain and Neuroscience.  Additionally, Neurovations Education helps companies and clinicians develop and learn surgical therapies.  Dr. Grigsby’s non-profit foundation, HealthRoots, is committed to community health and innovation for underserved patients and communities.

Originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, Dr. Grigsby is a graduate of Brown University with an undergraduate degree in Biology and Economics. He completed medical school at Boston University School of Medicine and residency training in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He received his Master’s in Business Administration in Health Sector Management from Duke University.

Sheldon Jordan, MD
Director-at-Large

Sheldon Jordan, MD, is a board certified neurologist. Considered a top doctor by Best Doctors in America, Who’s Who, Global Edition, and Super Doctors, his philosophy is to listen to patients’ individual stories and provide management and treatment solutions tailored specifically to their needs.

Dr. Jordon is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry Neurology, American Board of Clinical Neurophysiology, American Board of Addiction Medicine, and American Board of Interventional Pain Medicine. He was elected as Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and holds additional certifications from the American Society of Neuroimaging in Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Computed Tomography and Ultrasonography.

In private practice in Westwood and Santa Monica since 1981, Dr. Jordon’s emphasis is on interventional pain management, neuroimaging, clinical neurophysiology and sports neurology. He has numerous publications based on the clinical experience and research in these areas. He research interests include Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) for treatment of depression, pain and a variety of neurological and psychiatric disorders. He is a member of the national consortium for developing guidelines for Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. He has also served as a consultant for the State of California, Commission of Judicial Performance.

Dr. Jordan was a Goldwyn Scholar and graduated from UCLA Medical School in 1977 with the Upjohn Award for best student in combined research and academics and the Gold Medal in Surgery. He did his medical internship, residency and fellowships in clinical neurophysiology while staffing the electroencephalography laboratory and electromyography laboratory and completing all studies in 1981.

Annu Navani, MD
Director-at-Large

Dr. Annu Navani is the Founder and CEO of Comprehensive Spine and Sports Center, the leader in interventional and multidisciplinary spine, musculoskeletal, and orthopedic care. Over the last decade, she has scaled a solo practice to a large multispecialty group practice with more than 20 service lines that operate via multiple state-of-the-art centers in Northern California. 

Dr. Navani is an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor at the Division of Pain, Stanford University School of Medicine. She also serves as an Advisor to Le Reve Regenerative Wellness, the center for cutting-edge restorative and regenerative solutions for clinical applications and research. 

Dr. Navani completed her Anesthesiology residency from Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and Fellowship in Pain Medicine from the University of California, Davis. She is board certified in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine by the American Board of Anesthesiology, in Interventional Pain by the American Board of Interventional Pain Physicians, and in Regenerative Medicine by the American Board of Regenerative Medicine. 

She sits on the Editorial Board of the journal, Pain Physician and serves on the board of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, California Society of Industrial Medicine and Surgery, and California Society of Interventional Pain Physicians. She is the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Association of Interventional Pain Physicians, The American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, and The Postgraduate Assembly in Anesthesiology. 

She has extensive publications in the field of Interventional spine and Regenerative medicine and has contributed via several peer-reviewed journal articles, visionary editorials, and book chapters. Her book, “Essentials of Regenerative Medicine” is first in its right illustrating the latest interventional techniques in spine and musculoskeletal interventions. She has also been instrumental in co-authoring several National Guidelines including the ones on Opioids, Interventional Spine Epidural procedures, Facet joints, and Biologics in Lumbar spine.

Her vision is to forward the field of interventional pain by using technological innovations to improve access, decrease health care costs, and maximize quality and efficiency.