Professional Interests

Dr. Starrels is Professor of Medicine (with tenure) at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center, Associate Chief of Research in the Division of General Internal Medicine, and Director of the IMPOWR-ME Research Center. She is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine. Dr. Starrels is nationally recognized for her expertise in research, clinical care, education, and health policy to address the opioid crisis. Her research focuses on opioid management for patients with chronic pain with or without opioid use disorder. In particular, she studies the benefits and harms of opioid tapering, treatment agreements, urine drug testing, prescription monitoring programs, and medical cannabis use. She also studies the impact of opioid use on HIV outcomes, collaborative care models for integrating behavioral health care and pain management, treatment of opioid use disorder in primary care, and integrated treatment for opioid use disorder and chronic pain. Her work has been funded by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the Society of General Internal Medicine, the New York Community Trust, and the Montefiore Einstein Center for AIDS Research. Her expertise has been recognized by invitations to serve as expert consultant to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the New York State Department of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for developing guidelines and initiatives to improve opioid prescribing.

Dr. Starrels joined the Montefiore Einstein faculty in 2008. Her teaching and clinical care activities also focus on chronic pain and substance use. She is faculty in the Center on Comparative Effectiveness Research, leads a number of opioid and pain related initiatives, is teaching faculty in the Internal Medicine and Primary Care and Social Internal Medicine residency training programs, and is attending physician at the Montefiore Family Care Center where she focuses on caring for patients with chronic pain and who use opioids and/or medical cannabis.

Before joining Montefiore Einstein, Dr. Starrels received her BA from Wesleyan University, where she majored in the Science in Society Program, and her MD from Jefferson Medical College. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and fellowship in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received a MS in Health Policy Research.

Selected Publications

1. Starrels JL, Becker WC, Alford DP, Kapoor, A, Williams AR, Turner BJ. Treatment Agreements and Urine Drug Testing to Reduce Opioid Misuse in Patients with Chronic Pain: A Systematic Review. Annals of Internal Medicine.2010;152:712-720.
2. Starrels JL, Becker WC, Weiner MG, Li X, Heo M, Turner, BJ. Low Use of Opioid Risk Reduction Strategies for Even High Risk Primary Care Patients with Chronic Pain. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2011;26(9);958-64.
3. Starrels JL, Fox AD, Kunins HV, Cunningham CO. They Don’t Know What They Don’t Know: Internal Medicine Residents’ Knowledge and Confidence in Urine Drug Test Interpretation for Patients with Chronic Pain. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2012;27(11):1521-1527.
4. Bachhuber MA, Hennesy S, Cunningham CO, Starrels JL. Increasing benzodiazepine prescriptions and overdose mortality in the United States, 1996-2013. American Journal of Public Health. 2016;106(4):686-8. 
5. Starrels JL, Peyser D, Haughton L, Fox AD, Merlin J, Arnsten JH, Cunningham CO. When HIV treatment goals conflict with guideline-based opioid prescribing: A qualitative study of HIV treatment providers. Substance Abuse. 2016;37(1):148-53.
6. Buonora M, Perez H, Heo M, Ning Y, Cunningham CO, Starrels JL. Race and gender are associated with opioid dose reduction among patients receiving chronic opioid therapy. Pain Medicine. 2018.