Stronger together

Jon E. Sprague
Jon E. Sprague is the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation eminent scholar and the director of science and research for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. He previously led the attorney general’s Center for the Future of Forensic Science at Bowling Green State University. Prior to joining BGSU, Sprague was the director of Academic Research and head of Pharmaceutical Sciences for the College of Pharmacy at Ferris State University in Michigan. Previously, at the Raabe College of Pharmacy at Ohio Northern University, he was both the dean and a professor of pharmacology. Sprague also has served as the chairman and a professor of pharmacology at the Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine at Virginia Tech University. He earned his doctorate in pharmacology and toxicology from Purdue University, where he also served on the faculty in the College of Pharmacy. His research and teaching interests include the neurobiology of addiction and the pharmacology and toxicology of drugs of abuse. Sprague has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications on these topic areas. He was instrumental in writing Ohio’s law on synthetic drugs, which focused on synthetic cathinones, cannabinoids and opioids.

Elizabeth Delaney
Beth Delaney is an associate professor in the Cedarville University School of Nursing and a family nurse practitioner in the Dayton Physicians Network focusing on oncology cancer survivorship, palliative care and hospice. These areas of expertise have remained steady throughout her professional nursing career; prior to teaching, she worked for more than 20 years as a nurse leader at Miami Valley Hospital and The Ohio State University’s Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. Her passion is developing and leading innovative programs and research that serve patients and their families and that inspire others to join the efforts and grow as individuals. Delaney also partners with her husband, Pastor Greg Delaney, to work locally and nationally to educate and increase collaboration among organizations that provide hope and help to those facing addiction or those in recovery. She currently serves as board chairwoman for Her Story House and is on the leadership team for Freedom Recovery, a ministry at A House of Prayer in Xenia. Delaney is a graduate of Wright State University; she earned her doctorate of nursing practice from Ohio State University.

Caroline Freiermuth
Caroline Freiermuth, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Cincinnati, witnesses firsthand the damage that opioids cause to patients and their families, whether by overdose, infections from IV drug use, or reckless behavior. Freiermuth served on the opioid safety task force at Duke University and, upon relocating to Cincinnati in January 2018, joined the same task force at the University of Cincinnati. She works closely with hospital residents and medical students, educating them on the appropriate use of opioids and alternatives for pain management. She is a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians Pain Management and Addiction Medicine Section, which brings together members nationwide to discuss best practices for pain management and strives to disseminate available evidence to emergency physicians throughout the country. Freiermuth has been instrumental in the success of the Narcan Distribution Collaborative in Hamilton County, promoting distribution of naloxone to at-risk individuals in local emergency departments and the community at large. She has presented findings from this initiative at multiple national meetings. She obtained her Drug Addiction Treatment Act (DATA) waiver, allowing her to prescribe suboxone to eligible patients seen in the emergency department, and has been a champion of medication-assisted therapy in the emergency department.

Tessa Miracle
Tessa Miracle is a research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE). Since earning her doctoral degree from the University of Cincinnati, she has focused her professional efforts on decreasing substance misuse by supporting community-based intervention and currently serves as the evaluator for Ohio’s Strategic Prevention Framework for Prescription Drug Misuse (SPF Rx). Miracle has served as coordinator and evaluator of Ohio initiatives to develop statewide and community capacity for the implementation of evidence-based strategies, helping to facilitate research to improve statewide systems and community health. She has served the Cincinnati region and Miami Valley by facilitating and integrating resources and prevention efforts in areas involving marijuana, opiates, alcohol, HIV/AIDS, sexual violence, integrated behavioral health, and mental health awareness. She has experience using the Strategic Prevention Framework activities to guide county and regional coalitions through strategic planning, implementation and evaluation.

Rene Saran
Rene Saran is a professor of economics at the University of Cincinnati. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Delhi, India, and earned his doctoral degree in economics in 2007 from Brown University. He then moved to the Netherlands to work as an assistant professor of economics at Maastricht University. In 2012, he joined Yale-NUS College in, Singapore, as one of its inaugural faculty members, working there for five years. Saran’s research interests span an array of fields, including microeconomics, game theory, mechanism design, behavioral economics and political economy. He is interested in how people behave while interacting within socioeconomic institutions, such as markets, and the desirability of the resulting outcomes in terms of efficiency or other social-welfare criteria. While pursuing such an inquiry, he seeks to understand the relationship between individuals’ incentives and the institutional setup. In his research, Saran gives due consideration to both material and non-material incentives, and scrutinizes the connection between incentives, beliefs and behavior. He has published several articles in top peer-reviewed journals, including the Review of Economic Studies, Economic Journal, and Journal of Economic Theory.

Donnie Sullivan
Donnie Sullivan is a professor of clinical pharmacy at The Ohio State University’s College of Pharmacy. He received his bachelor’s degree in pharmacy in 1990 from Ohio State, from which he later earned a master’s degree as well as a doctorate in pharmacy administration. He has delivered more than 150 professional presentations on state and federal drug laws to pharmacists nationwide and has published several peer-reviewed articles and five consumer-drug reference books. For 24 years, Sullivan has taught courses in pharmacy law, prescription drug diversion, medication error prevention and over-the-counter products. For 11 years, Sullivan has trained DEA and FBI agents and U.S. attorneys on prescription drug diversion trends and analysis. He is part of the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force and New England Prescription Opioid Strike Force, developed to attack prescription drug abuse and diversion. He also has analyzed data and consulted on prescription drug diversion cases encompassing more than 800,000 controlled-substance prescriptions for various federal agencies.

Julie Teater
Julie Teater is an associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and her medical degree from The Ohio State University, where she also did her psychiatry residency. Dr. Teater is board-certified in psychiatry and addiction medicine, and is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. She is the medical director of addiction medicine at the Wexner Medical Center, including Talbot Hall, which is the addiction medicine treatment center at OSU’s East Hospital. She also serves as director of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program and as associate program director for OSU’s psychiatry residency. Outside of addiction medicine, her academic interests include medical student and resident education as well as the expansion of medications for opioid use disorder to emergency room and inpatient hospital settings. Dr. Teater serves on the RecoveryOhio Advisory Council for the state of Ohio

Arthur B. Yeh
Arthur B. Yeh, who has a doctorate in statistics from Rutgers University, is a professor of statistics in Bowling Green State University’s Department of Applied Statistics and Operations, where he previously served as chairman. He is currently associate dean of BGSU’s College of Business, where he was the Owens-Illinois professor and formerly directed the Center for Business Analytics. In the past 10 years, Yeh has been instrumental in the developments of several undergraduate and graduate programs related to data science/analytics at the college and university levels. He has more than 40 peer-reviewed publications on topics including optimal experimental designs, univariate and multivariate control charts, multivariate process capability indices, univariate and multivariate run-by-run process control and statistical profile monitoring. He served as an associate editor for The Statistical Papers and The American Statistician. He also was chairman of the Toledo Section of the American Society for Quality.