Art Van Zee, during his Internal Medicine Residency at Vanderbilt, served as a mentor for Coalition students in 1974 and 1975 when the health fairs were active in St. Charles and other southwest Virginia sites. He was very taken by the community and so many of the local clinic’s founders that he returned to St. Charles in 1976. It proved to be a good match. The clinic has grown substantially over the years, with its umbrella organization, Stone Mountain Health Services, now having 11 primary care clinic sites and 2 Black Lung programs in 7 counties throughout southwest Virginia.
Later, Dr. Van Zee got involved in the opioid tragedy in 1999-2000, as many tens of thousands in Central Appalachia became addicted to OxyContin. The tragic toll this took on individual lives, families, and communities cannot be overstated. He became an early critic of the marketing and promotion of OxyContin by Purdue Pharma and through his developing interest in Addiction Medicine, has been a buprenorphine prescriber since 2003. He feels that these contributions are some of the most meaningful he’s made in his 46 years of Internal Medicine practice in St. Charles.
Art Van Zee has authored several works, led numerous presentations and been invited to participate on several committees, and has been featured in others’ publications about his work. Below is a small sample of some of his own, including two poignant poems:
- “OxyContin” was first published in April of 2004 in the academic medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine. Three years later, it was featured in the American College of Physicians’ 2007 publication On Being A Doctor, a collection of prose and poetry by physicians about their wide-ranging individual experiences in medicine. Van Zee, A. (2004). OxyContin. Annals of Internal Medicine, 140(7), 527. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-140-7-200404060-00012
- “Full Moon OxyContin Funeral, Big Stone Gap” was published in American Society of Addiction Medicine’s online publication in 2013. Van Zee, A. (2013). Full Moon OxyContin Funeral, Big Stone Gap. American Society of Addiction Medicine Magazine, 1(3).
- Van Zee, A. (2009). The Promotion and Marketing of Oxycontin: Commercial Triumph, Public Health Tragedy. American Journal of Public Health, 99(2), 221–227. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2007.131714
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