Program Clinical Faculty
About Me
Kaitlan Baston, MD, MSc, is Head of the Cooper University Health Care Center for Healing, and Medical Director of Addiction Medicine and Medical Director of Government Relations at Cooper University Health Care in Camden, New Jersey. She is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University (CMSRU), and is dual-boarded in family medicine and addiction medicine.
Dr. Baston obtained a master's degree in neuroscience from King's College London and then graduated from Jefferson Medical College, now the Sidney Kimmel Medical College. She pursued full spectrum family medicine training with obstetrics in Seattle, where her work in primary care illuminated the stigma and marginalization associated with substance use disorder (SUD). She observed that both patients and medical professionals suffer from the lack of addiction medicine training and integration into health care. With the goals of community-centered health care delivery, population health improvement, and hospital system quality improvement (QI), she completed an American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM)-accredited fellowship in addiction medicine. Following her training, she returned to the East Coast to begin her career.
In 2015, she became the Medical Director of Cooper's Division of Addiction Medicine and built what is now the Center for Healing. The center's mission is to develop well-understood treatments for SUD, pain, and psychological trauma through innovation and research, while ensuring that evidence-based practice is promoted through both undergraduate and graduate medical education (GME). At the core of this mission, is a vision where the center is dedicated to ending stigma and promoting the best clinical practices through evidence-based medicine rooted in health equity and humanism, allowing people in recovery to live full and satisfying lives. This mission and vision is exemplified through compassionate and empathetic leadership excellence envisioned and employed by Dr. Baston in collaboration with the center's clinical leadership and all center medical specialists and interdisciplinary staff.
The Center for Healing is committed to providing cutting-edge and inclusive care for all patients struggling with SUD, pain, trauma, and psychiatric disorders. Using a variety of unique programming, medical specialty services include but are not limited to: transition care for people recently released from incarceration; an emergency department (ED) and hospital bridge program; a low-barrier walk-in clinic; integrated addiction and infectious disease care; dual diagnosis psychiatric and addiction care; individual, group, and family behavioral health care; a wraparound perinatal program, Empowering Mothers to Parent and Overcome with Resilience (EMPOWR); full coverage services for SUD and mental health for uninsured and underinsured people including those experiencing undocumentation; and other innovative community-based work.
Currently, Dr. Baston is focused on work at a policy level to support state-funded programs for SUD treatment and improvements in population health by addressing social determinants of health (SDOH). In her role as Medical Director of Government Relations, she strives to ensure that all patients have access to compassionate care and evidence-based medical treatments that allow them to live full and satisfying lives. Dr. Baston is proud to work with an interdisciplinary team of like-minded, driven individuals at Cooper, dedicated to making positive change in the health care system.
About Me
Rachel Ehrman-Dupre, MD was a fellow in the inaugural 2020 Cooper Addiction Medicine Fellowship. Prior to her fellowship training, she completed residency training in family and community medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital at Jefferson Health.
During residency training, she focused on the care of vulnerable populations with an emphasis on sexual and reproductive health and spent a year of training holding a continuity clinic at the Mazzoni Center, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning (LGBTQ) community health clinic in Philadelphia. She sought additional training experience during residency through Pathways to Housing PA in Philadelphia, working primarily with patients with substance use disorder (SUD).
Since joining the Cooper University Health Care Center for Healing as faculty, Dr. Ehrman-Dupre has focused on integrating primary care and reproductive health services into clinical settings. She also clinically leads the Empowering Mothers to Parent and Overcome with Resilience (EMPOWR) perinatal medical group visits. As a Cooper Addiction Medicine Fellow, her quality improvement (QI) project focused on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) initiation for injection drug users (IDU), and she has since lectured both providers at Cooper and in the broader Camden community about PrEP for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention.
Dr. Ehrman-Dupre looks forward to expanding her work to improve Center for Healing patient access to a full spectrum of preventative health services.
About Me
Rachel Haroz, MD, FAACT, is Medical Director of the Cooper University Health Care Center for Healing, Division Head of Toxicology and Addiction Medicine at Cooper University Health Care, and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine (EM) at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University (CMSRU). She is triple-board certified in EM, medical toxicology, and addiction medicine, obtaining her bachelor of arts degree in biology from Brandeis University and medical degree from Tufts University, and completing a residency in EM and fellowship in medical toxicology.
She has spent nearly her entire career thus far working in inner city emergency departments (ED), mostly in the Camden, New Jersey area where opioid intoxication, abuse, and dependency are rampant. She helped build and now staffs the Center for Healing in Camden, an addiction medicine specialty clinic dedicated to treating patients with SUD. Further she helped build an integrated clinic for patients with HIV and SUD.
In 2016, Dr. Haroz helped create and implement an initiative to prescribe buprenorphine from the ED and "bridge" patients to treatment to various community partners (now known as CUH EDAP, Cooper University Health Care Emergency Department Addiction Pathways). In 2019, she helped launch an innovative program aimed at initiating buprenorphine via paramedics in the field (now known as Bupe FIRST EMS, Buprenorphine Field Initiation of ReScue Treatment). She is also heavily involved in the education of residents, medical students, and pharmacists, and organizes education forums focused on topics related to opioid dependency and treatment.
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About Me
Christopher Milburn, MD is a psychiatrist practicing addiction medicine. He completed his undergraduate medical education at Jefferson Medical College, now the Sidney Kimmel Medical College, and his psychiatry residency at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital at Jefferson Health. He always had a strong interest in addiction medicine and after completing his residency, worked as an attending at Jefferson Health in their methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) clinic. While at Jefferson, he was also the director of their psychiatric inpatient unit which worked closely with the obstetrics department to specialize in the treatment and management of pregnant patients with co-occurring substance use disorder (SUD) and mental health diagnoses.
Following his work at Jefferson Health, Dr. Milburn worked at Christiana Hospital, where he launched an outpatient buprenorphine program, also with focus on the management of opioid use disorder (OUD) in pregnant patients. Further he participated in the development of an opioid treatment protocol for patients with co-occurring disorders. Following his time at Christiana Hospital, he worked at Crozer-Chester Medical Center, expanding their outpatient buprenorphine program, assisting in the opening of a new inpatient detoxification and rehab unit as well as their MMT program. Dr. Milburn is now Association Program Director for the Cooper University Health Care Addiction Medicine Fellowship, an Attending Physician at the Cooper University Health Care Center for Healing, and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University (CMSRU).
About Me
Matthew S. Salzman, MD graduated from Jefferson Medical College, now the Sidney Kimmel Medical College and trained in emergency medicine (EM) and medical toxicology at Drexel University College of Medicine. He is Medical Director of Inpatient Consult Services, Addiction Medicine, at Cooper University Health Care; Research Director at the Cooper University Health Care Center for Healing; an Attending Physician in Emergency Medicine (EM) and Addiction Medicine at at Cooper University Health Care; and Assistant Professor of EM at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University (CMSRU).
Dr. Salzman is triple-board certified in EM, medical toxicology, and addiction medicine. He also is a volunteer consultant at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Philadelphia Poison Control Center (PPCC). Dr. Salzman has been an invited lecturer locally, regionally, and nationally, speaking about commonly misused substances, contaminants therein, and the overdose crisis. He, along with his collaborators, received a grant from the Emergency Medicine Foundation (EMF) and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to develop an SUD curriculum for the EM Residency Program at CMRSU.
Dr. Salzman is heavily involved in helping to design, implement, and review research in the field conducted by Center for Healing faculty and in partnership with other Cooper departments. He is currently working on the opioid genomics project in conjunction with CMSRU and the Coriell Institute for Medical Research and several studies in conjunction with the emergency department (ED), and is mentoring medical students and residents with research interests in the field.
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About Me
Ryan Schmidt, MD is Program Director for the Cooper University Health Care Addiction Medicine Fellowship, Medical Director of Recovery Village Cherry Hill at Cooper, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University (CMSRU). He is a graduate of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and completed his internal medicine residency at Temple University Hospital and addiction medicine fellowship at Caron Treatment Center.
Dr. Schmidt is board-certified in both internal medicine and addiction medicine. He is a member of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), the American College of Academic Addiction Medicine, and the ASAM Physician-in-Training Committee. He is a previous recipient of the ASAM Ruth Fox Scholarship.
Dr. Schmidt is a certified buprenorphine training instructor through Provider Clinical Support System (PCSS) and has participated in multiple trainings at Cooper as well as state-level trainings. He has had multiple poster presentations at the ASAM Annual Conference on topics including hepatitis C virus (HCV) screening for those undergoing inpatient substance use disorder (SUD) treatment and co-prescribing naloxone in primary care patients on chronic opiates.