Project Good Podcast

Host Annmarie Hylton introduces Project Good’s September focus on pain, highlighting a global crisis of inequitable access to basic pain relief and palliative care alongside opioid overprescription and overdose in high-income nations. She interviews Dr. Melissa Durham, a USC clinical pharmacy associate professor and clinical pharmacist who founded and runs a pharmacy-led pain medication management service for complex chronic non-cancer pain. Durham describes choosing pharmacy, building her pain practice model from the ground up, and navigating barriers to controlled-substance prescribing and dispensing amid regulatory fear. She emphasizes functional outcomes and quality of life, evidence-based monitoring, stigma reduction, and patient privacy, noting harms from misapplied 2016 CDC opioid guideline dose cutoffs while acknowledging improved prescribing trends. The conversation covers personalized care through social determinants and health equity, clinician compassion fatigue and “boundaried compassionate caregiving,” AI for efficiency, and a vision for multidisciplinary pain care access.

00:00 Welcome to Project Good
01:03 Meet Dr Melissa Durham
03:05 Why Pharmacy and Pain
07:41 Opioids and Access Barriers
19:22 Personalized Care and Equity
23:34 Teaching Health Justice
29:53 Compassion Fatigue and Boundaries
41:54 Pain Care Around the World
49:28 Defining Wellness and Thriving
56:14 AI in Healthcare
01:01:23 Closing and Resources

Melissa J. Durham is an Associate Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of Southern California (USC) Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.  She received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree, completed a residency in Community-based Pharmacy Practice, and has a Master of Academic Medicine degree, all from USC.

Dr. Durham is a clinical pharmacist at the USC Pain Center, where she established and runs a pharmacist-led pain medication management service for patients with a variety of complicated chronic nononcologic pain conditions. She is dedicated to improving the quality of life for people with chronic pain through patient-centered and compassionate care. The value of her unique practice model has been recognized and published both nationally and internationally. Dr. Durham is also a practicing community pharmacist and provides a valuable and unique perspective of a clinician who is both a prescriber and a dispenser – a perspective that is valuable to patients, providers, health systems, and industry alike.

Dr. Durham is a sought-after speaker on the topics of pain management, risk reduction and harm reduction, and the U.S. Opioid Epidemic. She is originally from Central California and resides in Los Angeles.