Beth Darnall, PhD

Dr. Darnall is Associate Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine. She directs the Stanford Pain Relief Innovations Lab and 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 novel pain treatments that are scalable, effective, and low burden. Her single-session skills-based pain class, Empowered ReliefTM is available in two languages and in healthcare systems throughout the U.S., and in Australia, U.K., Denmark and Canada. Digital therapeutic innovations include on-demand, skills-based, self-regulatory treatment for perioperative patients, and virtual reality for acute and chronic pain. 

She twice briefed the U.S. Congress on the opioid and pain crises, and provided invited testimony to the FDA on iatrogenic harms associated with opioid tapering. She is an invited scientific member of the NIH Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee, a federal advisory committee created by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to enhance pain research efforts and collaboration across the government, and advance the fundamental understanding of pain and pain treatment. Her work has been featured in outlets such as Scientific American, NPR Radio, BBC Radio, and Nature. 

She has authored or coauthored five books for patients and clinicians, including Psychological Treatment for Patients With Chronic Pain, ©2018 APA Press. In 2018 she spoke on the psychology of pain relief at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.