Director of Behavioral Sciences, Lehigh Valley Health Network
Dr. Angela Colistra, Ph.D., LPC, CAADC, CCS is the director of behavioral sciences in the department of family medicine at an academic health network. She is an Assistant Professor with USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. She trains family medicine residents and medical students, works as an integrated behavioral health specialist at an FQHC look-alike, and oversees addiction and behavioral health integration for a Pennsylvania Coordinated Medicated Assisted Treatment (PacMAT) in primary care grant received from Governor Wolf of Pennsylvania. Her 20 years of clinical experience is working with individuals managing behavioral health and substance use disorders as a researcher, clinical supervisor and professional counselor across a continuum of care. She has expertise in treating Opioid Use Disorders developed through her work in addiction treatment, methadone OTP, naloxone intervention and prevention, and MAT in Primary Care. Her work has been sought to train health care providers on addiction response internationally under the direction of the International Center for Health Concerns in Kathmandu, Nepal and Beijing, China, and gained her recognition from the United States Embassy. In her previous faculty position at Drexel University, she recognized the gap in education for behavioral health and nursing professions and she innovated and built an online master of science in addiction counseling, for this work she received a People of Purpose award from her college. Colistra believes that to improve healthcare outcomes for individuals with Substance Use Disorders, there must be strong interdisciplinary partnerships, as an addiction and behavioral counseling faculty for Project ECHO -a hub-and-spoke knowledge-sharing network that utilizes a virtual clinic with community providers, she assists with patient cases to contribute best practices in addiction and behavioral health treatment. She is an American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) faculty and committee member for the Fundamentals of Addiction Medicine training. Dr. Angela Colistra is a native of West Virginia and the ethical treatment of people with substance use disorders is a personal and professional calling.