Mark Ware
Mark A. Ware, MD, MRCP, MSc, ICD.D.
Director, Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit
Alan Edwards Chair in Clinical Pain
Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine
Dr. Ware is a family physician and currently serves as the Director of the interdisciplinary Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit, based at the Montreal General Hospital of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). He is an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at McGill University and holds the endowed Alan Edwards Chair in Clinical Pain.
Dr. Ware received his medical degree from the University of the West Indies in 1992. After postgraduate training in internal medicine and research on the painful crisis of sickle cell disease in Jamaica, he completed an MSc in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1999. He then moved to Montreal as a research assistant and practiced pain management at the MUHC from 2001 to 2018, attaining the rank of tenured associate professor at McGill. His primary research interest was evaluating the safety and efficacy of cannabis in pain management and developing large cohorts of pain patients to identify patterns of care and risk factors for response to treatment.
He was a co-founder of the non-profit Canadian Consortium for the Investigation of Cannabinoids and served as Executive Director from 2007 to 2018. He has advised the Canadian federal government on cannabis policy since 2001. In 2016, he served as the vice-chair of the Federal Task Force on the Legalization and Regulation of Cannabis in Canada; the report became Canadian Law as the Cannabis Act in October 2018.
From 2018 to 2022, Dr. Ware served as Chief Medical Officer of Canopy Growth Corporation. In this capacity he helped establish the Company's global medical division and led the teams responsible for the supply and regulatory documentation, clinical development, medical affairs and global product safety.
Research Interests: Dr. Ware practices pain medicine at the Montreal General Hospital. Dr. Ware has received research funding from the CIHR and salary support up the level of chercheur-boursier clinicien senior from the FRSQ. He teaches clinical pain management, including pharmacology, complementary approaches to chronic pain and the neurobiology of pain. His research has focused on the safety, efficacy and effectiveness of cannabis and cannabinoids in pain and symptom management. His educational work is focused on improving pain education at all level of the medical curriculum (undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing medical education). Current interests include the use of music as a therapy for chronic pain and optimizing the interdisciplinary management of pain using innovative digital technologies.
Keywords: Pain, Cannabinoids, Epidemiology, Complementary Medicine, Epidemiology of chronic pain; primary care management of low back pain; evaluating the use of cannabis and cannabinoids for medical purposes; evaluating complementary and alternative approaches to pain management.
List of Publications:
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