Beth Darnall PhD

Beth Darnall, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is principal investigator for large NIH and PCORI-funded multi-site clinical trials that broadly investigate behavioral medicine strategies for acute and chronic pain, and voluntary patient-centered prescription opioid reduction.

She has authored/co-authored five books for patients and clinicians, including Psychological Treatment for Chronic Pain (APA Press, 218). She creates and investigates brief, scalable, accessible and digital treatments for acute and chronic pain. Her single-session skills-based pain class ("Empowered Relief") is available in English and French, and is embedded in healthcare organizations, pain clinics and primary-care clinics (delivered by certified instructors) throughout the U.S., Canada, U.K., Denmark, and Australia.

In 2018 she briefed the U.S. Congress on the opioid and pain crises, and in 2019 she provided invited testimony to the FDA on iatrogenic harms from forced opioid tapering. Her work has been featured in 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.