Ms. Kauffman is the Director of the Addiction Psychiatry Service, Brigham and Women's Hospital, the Director of Substance Abuse Treatment Services for North Charles Foundation, Inc., and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. She is a 1972 graduate of the New England Baptist School of Nursing in Boston, MA and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Salem State College in 1980. She received her Masters in Public Health from Boston University Medical School in 1985. She has been a Certified Addiction Specialist since 1989.

She has work with addictive disorders for the past 30 years in direct treatment, program development and management, teaching, and local and national policy initiatives. She is the founder and President of the Massachusetts Methadone Treatment Providers Association and the Massachusetts delegate to the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence Board of Directors. She is on the Board of Directors for the Massachusetts Mental Health and Substance Abuse Association in Massachusetts and past Vice President and now Trustee of the Board of Directors for the American Academy of Health Care Providers in the Addictive Disorders. Areas of expertise include opioid dependence, addicted medical professors, dual diagnosis, pain and addiction and addictions in general hospitals.