Addiction Medicine Fellowship Faculty

Meet the faculty of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship.

Dinah Applewhite, MD

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Dinah is a primary care and addiction medicine physician who works at both MGH and Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program. She completed the MGH Addiction Medicine Fellowship in 2020. She primarily works with fellows as a preceptor at the MGH Bridge clinic. In addition, she provides primary care at MGH and at St. Francis House and works on the Community Care in Reach Van. In her role as Director of Harm Reduction for the MGH Substance Use Disorder Initiative, she has worked to expand patient access to safer use materials including safer injection and smoking supplies.

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Michael Bierer, MD

Pronouns: he/him/his

Michael received his MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1985); Internal Medicine/Primary Care residency at Mass General (1985-1988) and MPH at Harvard School of Public Health (1989). After leading the Boston Health Care for the Homeless effort based at Mass General 1989-2001, he participated in the Addiction Fellowship at BUSM (2001) and began addiction-oriented practice in the Internal Medicine Associates (IMA) at Mass General. Over the past two decades, Michael has helped to integrate addiction care into primary care (and vice versa). He is board certified in Addiction Medicine. Michael has been on the Board of Directors of Massachusetts Society of Addiction Medicine for over a decade and has served as President. Relevant scholarship involves curriculum development and teaching as well as occasional textbook chapters. COVID made him artsy.

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Deviney Chaponis, MD

Dr. Deviney Chaponis completed her undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University, medical training at the University of Massachusetts and family medicine residency at Tufts University/Cambridge Health Alliance.

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Jessie M. Gaeta, MD

Jessie M. Gaeta, MD has practiced Internal Medicine at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program since 2002, and served as Chief Medical Officer from 2015-2022. Dually board certified in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine, Dr. Gaeta graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1998, trained in Internal Medicine at Boston University Medical Center, and served as Chief Resident in 2002. She completed a Physician Advocacy fellowship at the Institute on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2007.

Dr. Gaeta has dedicated herself to advocacy for and with people living with substance use disorders, particularly when they are disconnected from traditional pathways to care. She is always learning more from people with lived experience about homelessness, opioid use disorder, and harm reduction. Over the past two decades, she has spearheaded numerous innovative initiatives to rethink how we approach care for individuals with substance use disorder and complex health conditions, particularly when these conditions are exacerbated by severe poverty, racism, trauma, and social stigma.

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Evan Gale, MD

Pronouns: he/him/his

Evan is a dual board-certified internal medicine and addiction medicine physician. He serves as the Associate Medical Director for MGH’s inpatient Addiction Consult Team (ACT), the Director of Clinical Education and Teaching for ACT, and the Director of Inpatient Training for the Addiction Medicine Fellowship. Evan received his MD from the UMass Chan Medical School in 2016. He completed his internal medicine residency at Brown University in 2019, and his addiction medicine fellowship at Yale in 2020. Evan spends his clinical time on ACT. He is passionate about improving the care of hospitalized patients who use drugs and is a member of ASAM and AMERSA’s acute care specialty groups. Evan's goal is to improve care for hospitalized patients who use drugs by expanding addiction medicine education to providers outside of the specialty. He provides education on relevant addiction medicine topics to Harvard Medical students, internal medicine residents, psychiatry residents and pain fellows. He is working with MGH's inpatient palliative care team to create collaborative educational meetings and improve the care of hospitalized patients with cancer and substance use disorders.

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Jessica Gray, MD

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Jessica Gray is a dually board certified family medicine physician and addiction specialist in the departments of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Pediatrics in Mass General for Children (MGfC). She is associate program director for the MGH Addiction Medicine Fellowship and medical director of the HOPE Clinic at MGH, where she cares for women with substance use disorders and their families from time of conception through the first two years postpartum. She also sees patients at the MGH Bridge Clinic, a low-threshold outpatient substance use disorder treatment clinic. Prior to coming to MGH, Dr. Gray completed her family medicine residency and addiction medicine fellowship at Boston Medical Center and worked as a primary care doctor at a federally qualified health center in Dorchester, Massachusetts. She is passionate about caring and advocating for marginalized populations and supporting clinicians and others who care for patients with substance use disorders.

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Laura Kehoe, MD

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Laura is the medical director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Substance Use Disorder Bridge Clinic, an immediate access, low-barrier transitional clinic, as well as the Brightview Health Opioid Treatment Program. She is board certified in both Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine. She has cared for patients in primary care, inpatient, residential and various outpatient addiction treatment settings. Laura mentors providers and teams to incorporate addiction care into general medical settings and provides on-demand consultation to PCPs through DPH's MA Consultation Service for the Treatment of Addiction and Pain (MCSTAP). She was President-Elect of the Massachusetts ASAM chapter, after having served as Secretary. In addition to providing clinical care, teaching, and advocacy, Laura co-founded W.A.T.E.R.town (Watertown Access to Treatment Education and Recovery), a community coalition working to expand prevention, intervention and treatment for people with substance use disorder in Watertown, MA.

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Eugene Lambert, MD

Dr. Gene Lambert works as an addiction medicine physician on the MGH Addiction Consult Team (ACT) and has over 25 years of experience in the medical field. He graduated from Tufts University in 1998 and is a graduate of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship program.

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Wei Sum Li, MD

Wei Sum works as a primary care and addiction medicine physician at both MGH Charlestown Health Center and inpatient on the MGH Addiction Consult Team (ACT). She received her MD from UMass Chan Medical School in 2016 and completed internal medicine residency at Brown University in General Internal Medicine/Primary Care at Rhode Island Hospital where she also served as Chief Medical Resident before completing Addiction Medicine Fellowship. In addition to serving as faculty for the Addiction Medicine Fellowship, Wei Sum also serves as the Subspecialty Core Educator (SCE) for Addiction Medicine for the MGH Internal Medicine Residency.

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Jacquelyn Moss, MD

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Jackie is a primary care physician at MGH Chelsea Health Center. She is dual board certified in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine. She is the substance use disorders champion at her health center, working closely with the OBAT team and precepting an addiction medicine fellows clinic. She also spends time on the inpatient Addiction Consult Team.

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Sarah Wakeman, MD

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Sarah is the Medical Director for the Mass General Hospital Substance Use Disorder Initiative, program director of the Mass General Addiction Medicine fellowship, Medical Director for Substance Use Disorder at Mass General Brigham, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is also the Medical Director of the Mass General Hospital Addiction Consult Team, co-chair of the Mass General Opioid Task Force, and co-chair of the Mass General Brigham Substance Use Steering Committee. She received her MD from Brown Medical School. She completed residency training in internal medicine and served as Chief Medical Resident at Mass General Hospital. She is a diplomate and fellow of the American Board of Addiction Medicine and board certified in Addiction Medicine by the American Board of Preventive Medicine.

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Dawn Williamson, RN, DNP, PMHCNS-BC, CARN-AP

Dawn Williamson has over 30 years of nursing experience and is an Advanced Practice Nurse (APRN) for Addictions Consultation in the Emergency Department at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She responds to the treatment needs of both individuals and families with addiction and mental health issues in the emergency setting. She trains and supervises the clinical staff, develops, and implements policies relating to patient care, and aids with establishing treatment plans. She helped develop and implement multiple policies related to care of patients with substance use disorders (SUD). These procedures include; evaluation standards and practice after ED admission for opioid overdose, management of acutely intoxicated patients, administering harm reduction measures, methadone and buprenorphine initiation from the ED.

Ms. Williamson received her Doctorate in Nursing Practice from Regis College, her Masters in Science in Adult Mental Health Nursing from Northeastern University, and her BSN from the University of Massachusetts. She is Board Certified as a Clinical Specialist in Adult Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing. She is also a Certified Advanced Practice Addictions Registered Nurse.

She has practiced in both outpatient and hospital settings in an expanded role that includes prescriptive authority. Serving as a preceptor to nurse practitioner students from the Institute of Health Professions, Vanderbilt University, and Regis College of Nursing, she strives to pass along knowledge. As faculty for MGH Addiction Fellowship Programs, she hopes to inspire others with a commitment to decreasing the stigma associated with SUD and to be change agents in our communities.

Dawn has authored and co-authored multiple book chapters and journal articles on SUD and on managing complex patients in the emergency setting. By remaining an active member of the Association for Multidisciplinary Education and Research in Substance use and Addiction (AMERSA), she works to promote the impact that nursing can have in battling addictive disorders. Ms. Williamson believes that this influence extends beyond the hospital walls. As part of MGH Global Nursing Fellowship she traveled to Tanzania to provide addictions training to health care workers. She continues to work with members of the Lakota Tribe in South Dakota on treatment approaches to SUD.

On a legislative level an expertise in SUD lead her to be one of two APRNs appointed by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to a medical review group informing the state Prescription Monitoring Program. She has given numerous presentations on addiction and mental health treatment and strives to expand the use of evidenced based practices.