Dr. Joshua Prager M.D., M.S.

Dr. Joshua P. Prager is a distinguished board-certified pain medicine physician at the California Pain Medicine Center in Santa Monica, California. Born in New York City, Dr. Prager completed his pre-medical studies at Harvard University. He attended Stanford University School of Medicine, where he concurrently earned a master’s degree in management/health services research from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

He completed his internal medicine training at UCLA, followed by anesthesiology training at Stanford Medical Center and Harvard Medical School at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Prager holds board certifications in internal medicine, anesthesiology, and pain medicine, the latter from both The American Board of Anesthesiology and The American Board of Pain Medicine. His academic career includes full-time faculty positions at Harvard Medical School and The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he directed the UCLA Pain Medicine Center.

Currently, Dr. Prager serves as the director of the Center for the Rehabilitation of Pain Syndromes (CRPS). He is a faculty member in the Department of Internal Medicine at UCLA and has privileges with the Department of Anesthesiology at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital, and UCLA Santa Monica Orthopedic Hospital. He is a past President of the North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS) and served two consecutive terms as chair of the Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Group of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). He currently serves on the Board of the Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association (RSDSA).

Dr. Prager has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Distinguished Service Award from NANS. He has twice been recognized by the Department of Anesthesiology at UCLA for his contributions to teaching in the pain medicine fellowship. He received the Bounty of Hope award from the RSDSA for his patient care and contributions to the CRPS community, as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award from the CRPS Forum. His volunteer work includes providing internal medicine care at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic and anesthesia services for children in developing countries through Interplast. He has served as a consultant to Medicare at both local and national levels and has lectured extensively and conducted cadaver workshops in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Dr. Prager’s professional activities include chairing and participating in evidence-based medicine guidelines projects, leading a best practices project, and developing a revised treatment algorithm for CRPS. He is analyzing data on managing ketamine infusion side effects for treating CRPS and depression, with his publication in the Journal of Pain Medicine reviewing ketamine infusions for CRPS treatment.

His clinical practice focuses on CRPS, neuromodulation, and precision spinal diagnostics and therapeutics. Dr. Prager has overseen an active ketamine infusion program, administering over 7,000 infusions. Since 1998, he has managed a comprehensive interdisciplinary functional rehabilitation program aimed at restoring normal function in patients with complex regional pain syndromes and other pain conditions involving central sensitization. He is involved in research examining brain activity before and after ketamine infusions using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

In addition to his clinical practice, Dr. Prager serves as a medical expert witness in numerous cases involving pain and suffering, worker’s compensation, and disability.