An official website of the United States governmentOffice of the Clinical Director
About
Clinical Director: Miroslav “Misha” Bačkonja, M.D.
The Office of the Clinical Director in the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) Intramural Research Program promotes high quality mechanistic clinical research targeted at understanding pain, its development, maintenance, and transition to chronic pain. The Office of the Clinical Director provides a clinical setting and the medical expertise to (1) evaluate people with wide-ranging painful disorders and (2) better characterize those factors that contribute to pain and its modulation. Working together, NCCIH clinicians and scientists examine clinical characteristics of painful conditions and their comorbidities and explore the physiological underpinnings of these conditions. Office of the Clinical Director research uses sensory physiological testing and structural and functional MRI, in addition to behavioral and psychological testing to understand how cognitive, emotional, environmental and genetic factors influence pain states. In addition, the Office of the Clinical Director is poised to investigate a diverse range of pain management strategies from behavioral, to noninvasive stimulation, natural products, and novel pharmacologic interventions. Overall, the Office of the Clinical Director research attempts to provide a complete understanding of pain states, and opportunities to develop and test interventions that can effectively manage pain and improve quality of life among those who live with pain. To support these goals, the Office of the Clinical Director supports two research sections: the National Institutes of Health Pain Research Center (PRC) and the Affective Neuroscience and Pain Lab.
Clinical Director
Miroslav “Misha” Bačkonja, M.D., is clinical director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH). In this position, he is responsible for providing administrative, regulatory, and clinical support and oversite of the human research conducted by the NCCIH intramural investigators. He is also participating in research projects related to assessing pain and its underlying biological and neurobiological mechanisms; implementing and developing novel, precise measurements of pain; and developing novel therapies for pain by developing and applying principles of translational pain research.
Prior to his arrival at NCCIH, Dr. Bačkonja was a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at University of Washington–Seattle. He was also professor of neurology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and the University of Wisconsin Pain Treatment and Research Center. He has also served as a research clinician at contract research organizations. Read more about Dr. Bačkonja.