Beth Darnall, PhD
Stanford University

Beth Darnall, PhD is Associate Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine. She leads NIH and PCORI-funded clinical trials that broadly investigate behavioral medicine for acute and chronic pain, including a $9M multi-state trial on voluntary patient-centered prescription opioid reduction. Her team develops and investigates pain treatments that are scalable, effective, and low burden to patients, families, clinicians, and healthcare systems. Her efficient single-session behavioral pain medicine class, Empowered ReliefTM is available in two languages and in healthcare systems throughout the U.S., and in Australia, U.K., Denmark and Canada. She has authored or coauthored 5 books and is on the Editorial Board for MedPage Today. She creates and investigates digital interventions and virtual reality treatments for perioperative and chronic pain. She serves as the chief science advisor for AppliedVR. She twice briefed the U.S. Congress on the opioid and pain crises, and in 2019 provided invited testimony to the FDA on iatrogenic harms from forced opioid tapering. Her work has been featured in major media outlets including Scientific American, NPR Radio, BBC Radio, and Nature. In 2018 she spoke on the psychology of pain relief at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.