Aimee C. Chagnon, MD

Dr. Chagnon graduated summa cum laude from UC San Diego with a BS in Biochemistry and Cell Biology and a minor in psychology. After attending medical school at UC San Francisco she did her neurology residency at Harvard.

Dr. Chagnon returned to UCSF for an NIH fellowship which combined clinical pain management with clinical research. She remained on faculty at the UCSF Pain Management Center, eventually becoming director of teaching and clinical research. Her research included uses of thalidomide as a cytokine modulator in various intractable neuropathic pain syndromes, the results being presented at national and international pain conferences. She also researched the use of levetiracetam in fibromyalgia and post-herpetic neuralgia. This resulted in her serving as a scientific advisor to UCB Pharma, among others.

In 2007 Dr. Chagnon established her own practice, Sonoma Pain Management, in Sonoma combining medical pain management and general adult neurology. In 2022 the practice moved to Petaluma.

In addition to managing the practice, Dr. Chagnon has been fortunate to do a number of medical mission trips. These experiences were life changing. Her first trip was to Haiti a few weeks after the devastating earthquake in 2010. Three more to Haiti soon followed. One of the most difficult and most rewarding parts of her career was the week she spent in charge of a tent hospital’s emergency “room” in Leogane, Haiti. Some of her work there earned her an invitation to Sean Penn’s annual fundraiser for his organization—principally the role she played getting an infant with hydrocephalus admitted to the US who had been dumped overnight in the weeds outside an orphanage near death. Today that child is an American citizen, and with the help and generosity of UCSF’s neurosurgery department he has stunned everyone with his progress.