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Johnathan Goree, M.D., and Ayoola Carleton
Two UAMS Employees Selected for Arkansas Business’ 2021 40 Under 40 List
| Johnathan Goree, M.D., and Ayoola Carleton have been included in this year’s class of Arkansas Business’ 40 Under 40, a group of rising young professionals who will be honored with an in-person luncheon and an interactive virtual event on June 17 in Little Rock.
Honorees, all under the age of 40 years old as of the first of June this year, were selected for the impact they have made on his or her company or community and their potential for becoming a leader in business or politics during the next decade.
“Both Dr. Johnathan Goree and Ayoola Carleton have enhanced and expanded the depth and breadth of care for both our patients here at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and the residents of Arkansas,” said UAMS Health CEO and UAMS Chancellor Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA, of the recent announcement. “Dr. Goree’s work is especially important here in Arkansas where we have one of the nation’s highest prescribing rates resulting in high rates of addiction and overdose. He is also affecting the future by training the next generation of chronic pain specialists as fellowship director of the first accredited chronic pain physician training program in the state,” Patterson said.
“Ms. Carleton’s work also greatly impacts the community here in Arkansas,” Patterson said. “She has led large scale community-based research, including UAMS’s first statewide diabetes self-management research project. Her leadership was also critical in establishing a UAMS COVID-19 contact tracing center in Northwest Arkansas — the state’s only fully bilingual contact tracing center for Marshallese and Latinx communities.”
Goree, a Little Rock native, is director of the Chronic Pain Division at UAMS and an associate professor of anesthesiology in the College of Medicine The anesthesiologist who specializes in chronic pain was named Arkansas Physician of the Year at the Arkansas Business Healthcare Heroes annual celebration last year.
The Catholic High School graduate received his Bachelor of Arts in biology from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended medical school at the Weill College of Medicine at Cornell University in New York, followed by a fellowship at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, in interventional pain management.
In 2014, Goree returned home to join the faculty at UAMS, where he focuses on the treatment of complex regional pain syndrome. In addition to treating patients with innovative approaches to pain care, he also works with both patients and prescribers to combat the opioid crisis in Arkansas. He also works to insure access to quality pain care for underserved groups.
Goree is the founder and course director of the annual Arkansas Pain Management Symposium, offering high-quality continuing education, and is also a founding member of UAMS AR-IMPACT (Improving Multi-disciplinary Pain Care and Treatment), which holds free, live weekly teleconferences for health care professionals. He is also chair of the UAMS Opioid Stewardship Committee, a group of physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other health care professionals that provides safe and effective pain care at UAMS.
Based at the UAMS Northwest Regional Campus in Fayetteville, Carleton, associate director of research in the UAMS Office of Community Health and Research, oversees the implementation of health research projects in Arkansas and the Marshall Islands. Her professional goal is to increase access to preventative health care and evidence-based interventions to improve health outcomes and well-being for marginalized communities.
Before moving to Northwest Arkansas, Carleton worked at the Ford Foundation where she managed strategy development, impact assessments, research and special projects for the education grant-making portfolio. She also has extensive multicultural field experience, including leading program-evaluation team meetings in Bogata, Colombia, and teaching and conducting research in a rural village in Namibia, Africa, through the Harvard-affiliate WorldTeach.
Carleton holds a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York with a concentration in Strategic Planning and Finance in International Educational Development.