Practical Approaches to Clinical Addiction Care – Behavioral Addictions 

Dr. Fong is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and is board certified in adult and addiction psychiatry. He is the co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, whose purpose is to examine the clinical characteristics of gambling disorder and develop effective, evidence-based prevention and treatment strategies. Dr. Fong is part of the Steering Committee of the UCLA Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids whose mission is to address the most pressing questions related to the impact of cannabis on brain and behavior. He also directs the UCLA Sports Psychiatry Service that provides comprehensive psychiatric care to athletes, coaches and families. Additionally, Dr. Fong serves as the President of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, the largest medical professional society dedicated to the treatment of substance use disorder and co-occurring psychiatric disorders.

Kavita Fischer, MD, is a board‑certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania whose work is grounded in both clinical expertise and personal experience with gambling addiction. She is the immediate past president of the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society, a representative to the American Psychiatric Association Assembly, and a nationally recognized public health advocate for prevention of gambling harm. Dr. Fischer also serves as a regional medical director with Community Care Behavioral Health Organization and as a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, delivering care in the emergency department at Western Psychiatric Hospital of UPMC.

Dr. Fischer’s story and expertise have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, NPR, and the Emmy Award–winning documentary series Fault Lines, among others. She serves on the board of the nonprofit organization Stop Predatory Gambling and writes a regular column for GamblingHarm.org – a journalistic, consumer‑protection outlet examining gambling harm through a public health lens.

Dr. Colon-Rivera is a quintuple board-certified psychiatrist with specialized expertise in behavioral addictions with complex comorbidities, male-specific psychiatric presentations, and sports performance psychiatry. Dr. Colon-Rivera has spent his career specializing in these often underserved areas across a variety of settings, including hospitals, community clinics, and public health systems. Dr. Colon-Rivera’s practice focuses on compassionate, stigma-free, trauma-informed care, and how to tailor evidence-based approaches to amplify the care of individual patients.