Meet the Team

Dr. Catharina Armstrong, Associate Director

Catharina Armstrong, MD, MPH, is Associate Director of the Newton-Wellesley Hospital Substance Use Services. Dr. Armstrong graduated from University College Dublin School of Medicine. She completed Internal Medicine residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Armstrong was awarded a Master’s in Public Health from Harvard Medical School in 2014. She is board certified in Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases and Addiction Medicine and is an Assistant Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Armstrong was previously the Chief of Infectious Diseases and director of the Boston Medical Center and Shattuck site Addiction Fellowship program at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Boston. Her clinical and research interests are in prevention and management strategies to support those struggling with addiction and the intersect of infectious diseases and substance use disorders. Dr. Armstrong is an Addiction Medicine and Infectious diseases/HIV consultant at Framingham Women’s prison. She serves on the Continuing Medical Education (CME) Committee for the Addiction Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) and on the Board of Directors for the Boston Bulldogs Running Club, a non-profit running club established to provide a safe community of support for all those adversely affected by addiction.

Dr. Elliott B. Martin, Jr., Director of Medical Psychiatry

Elliott B. Martin, Jr., MD, is the Director of Medical Psychiatry at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. He is also an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine. He is triple board certified, in General Psychiatry, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Addiction Medicine. He completed his residency at Yale, and his fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. He has been at Newton-Wellesley since 2012. Dr. Martin has published over 50 articles in academic and popular journals, including research on clinician emotions during crises, philosophical and moral issues in medicine, the history of medicine and psychiatry, translations of ancient medical texts, and critical commentaries on current issues in psychiatry and medicine. He is a regular contributor to the Psychiatric Times and Op-Med. He is the author of Reconceptualizing Mental Illness in the Digital Age: Ghosts in the Machine (2021), The Virtuous Physician: A Brief Medical History of Moral Inquiry from Hippocrates to COVID-19 (2023), and Reconceptualizing Mental Illness in the Viral Age: Souls in the Machine (2024).

Dr. Antje Barreveld, Director of Education and Outreach

Antje Barreveld, MD, is Director of Education and Outreach at Newton-Wellesley Hospital's department of Substance Use Services. She graduated from the University of California San Francisco Medical School and completed her residency in Anesthesiology and fellowship in Pain Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. She is board certified in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine and is Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Barreveld is also Medical Director of the Newton-Wellesley Hospital Pain Management Services and Anesthesiologist with Commonwealth Anesthesia Associates in Newton, MA. Dr. Barreveld is Research Scientist and Research Associate at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA and teaches pain and addiction courses at Harvard Medical School and Tufts University Medical School. She is Co-Principal Investigator of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and Brigham and Women's Hospital Center of Excellence in Pain Education (CoEPE), designated by the National Institutes of Health Pain Consortium. Dr. Barreveld is Co-Editor of the Pain Education Section in Pain Medicine, the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. Her clinical and research interests are in safe practices in co-managing pain and addiction, addiction prevention in the community, pain management education, and multimodal pain management strategies.

Brenda Elizabeth Franco, MSW, LICSW, Clinical Social Worker

Brenda began her career working in the mental health field in 2014, when she was hired as an overnight Mental Health Specialist at McLean Hospital. She spent the next 10 years working with patients with substance use disorders and co-occurring disorders. In 2016 Brenda was accepted to Boston College School of Social Work and graduated in 2018. While in school, Brenda interned at BEST (Boston Emergency Services Team) and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital as a domestic violence advocate at Passageway.  Following graduation, Brenda returned to McLean Hospital as an inpatient clinical social worker. After many years in the inpatient setting, Brenda made the decision to move to the outpatient world. She is now a clinical social worker in the Substance Use Services clinic. Brenda is a native Spanish speaker and experienced in working with the Latinx community.

Gisselle Valencia, Recovery Coach

Jennifer Torrone - Practice Manager II

Shayla Spivey, Medical Assistant/Practice Coordinator