Dr. Tomer Anbar, PH.D., CGP, CTC

In 2002 Dr. Anbar established for California insurance stakeholders the prevalence of chronic pain as the most prevalent and complex health issue and largest cost driver in the workers’ compensation system. During the same year he launched the first evidence-based interdisciplinary biopsychosocial delayed recovery programs, and community based functional restoration bootcamps in California to address the chronic pain epidemic. Most recently the organization expanded its expertise to include its PTSD clinic, Traumatic Brain Injury rehabilitation program and services to address opioid/alcohol issues related to pain and disability in the work comp space.

In 2008 Dr. Anbar founded and was the first Director of the Interdisciplinary Chronic Pain & Functional Restoration Program at Scripps Health in San Diego. As Chief Clinical Advisor of the California Employers’ Fraud Task Force, he advised the California Department of Industrial relations, insurance carriers, claims administrators, and employers on how to systematically improve clinical outcomes and more effectively address chronic pain, delayed recovery and related conditions.

As former Chairman of the Pain Rehabilitation SIG of the American Pain Society and former Treasurer of the Musculoskeletal Pain SIG of the International Association for the Study of Pain comprised of 125 countries, Dr. Anbar has focused on promoting advances in the field of interdisciplinary biopsychosocial evidence-based care to address the chronic pain epidemic. His chronic pain and functional restoration programs were adopted as models by the Navy in San Diego, and Intel-GE’s telehealth platform.

Dr. Anbar is former head of the Unit of Clinical and Research Psychobiology at the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery, a research component of the World Health Organization in Mexico City. His work on the effects of environment on mental and physical health received international attention as the media reported on his research chronicling the toll Mexico City’s pollution was having on one of the world’s largest metropolises. His clinical, laboratory, psychological and social analysis and recommendations have become a blueprint for both civic groups and governmental agencies in taking action and forming sustained policy. His research into the effects of heavy metals and other contaminants on behavior have been integrated into numerous health and environmental programs around the world.

In 1995 Dr. Anbar entered into an industrial partnership with the San Diego Supercomputer Center, a component of the U.S. National Science Foundation to support his groups development and implementation of an internet-based platform and infrastructure to help protect the culture and posterity of the six million Mayans living in their original homelands of Mesoamerica known as Mundo Maya (the Mayan world) comprised of five countries: Mexico (States of Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Chiapas and Tabasco), Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.