Dr. Kunz is a native of Washington D.C. After high school he served in the Marine Corps and settled in Hawaii upon returning from Viet Nam. He is a graduate of the University of Hawaii and of the John Burns School of Medicine in Honolulu. He completed a flexible internship at Gorgas Hospital in the Canal Zone and a preventive medicine residency at the University of Hawaii. During and after residency he worked in the Hansen’s Disease Branch of the state’s Department of Health, serving statewide in Hansen’s Disease clinics and at Kalaupapa, Molokai.

Dr. Kunz joined Kona Medical Associates, a small primary care clinic serving Kealakekua and Kailua-Kona on the Island of Hawaii. He worked in outpatient and hospital settings and became active in community health development. Dr. Kunz led the coalitions that established the region’s first adult daycare center as well as the island’s first indigent care clinic, initially staffed by volunteers. The indigent care clinic received community support and grew to become an FQHC, now the Hawaii Island Community Health Center (HICHC). Recently, other community clinics merged into this entity, and it is now the largest FQHC in the state. The Center serves rural, ethnically diverse, underserved patients with substantial health disparities from a 180,000-person catchment area at 14 clinic sites.

The passion in Dr. Kunz’s career has been the care of patients and families with addictive disorders. He came to realize that addiction medicine is a practice built on three pillars: the relationship between physician and patient; the application of a rigorous evidence base; and the availability of a trained physician workforce, practicing within interdisciplinary teams. Eventually he came to believe that only a structural change in medical education and medicine could bring these goals to fruition.

By 1994, Dr. Kunz was attending a large population of patients with substance use disorder (SUD). He gained certification in addiction medicine, established an accredited outpatient treatment program, an interdisciplinary hospital addiction medicine service, and became active in local, state, and national SUD prevention and treatment activities. He served in multiple local and state leadership positions, and as a Director of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). In 2005 he co-chaired ASAM’s Medical Specialty Action Group, which led to establishment of the independent American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM) and the American College of Academic Addiction Medicine (ACAAM).

Dr. Kunz served as President of these organizations from 2008-2010 and as Executive Vice President from 2013 to 2020. Under his executive leadership ABAM certified over 4,000 physicians in addiction medicine, and ACAAM assisted in establishing and accrediting the first 52 addiction medicine fellowship program in the U.S, as well as three in Canada. The vision and work of ABAM and ACAAM, resultant from the efforts of their directors, staff and volunteers, was realized in 2016 when the American Board of Medical Specialties recognized addiction medicine as a multi-specialty subspecialty and in March, 2018 when the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education began accepting accreditation applications from  current and emerging addiction medicine fellowships. 

The recognition and inclusion of addiction medicine by these national, standard setting organizations will allow the prevention and treatment of SUD to enter mainstream American medicine and health care, equal to the recognition and support received for other medical disorders. The current work of ACAAM is aimed at supporting current addiction medicine fellowships, expanding the number of fellowships nationwide, and advancing organization of a community of academic addiction medicine professionals.

From 2013 to 2020 Dr. Kunz was the PI on $4M of funding directed at supporting addiction medicine fellowships and in expanding training in SUD prevention and early intervention. He has served as a section editor of Principles of Addiction Medicine and authored or co-authored journal articles and several book chapters, including The Addiction Medicine Physician as a Change Agent for Prevention and Public Health in the current edition of APM.

Dr. Kunz has received several awards and recognitions, including a national Frontiersman of the Year Award from the Salvation Army, the Hawaii Governor’s Kilohana Award for Volunteerism, the Hawaii Medical Association’s Clinician of the Year Award, the Outstanding Service Award from the Hawaii Island Rural Health Association, the Annual ASAM Award and the AMERSA John P. McGovern Award.

Dr. Kunz retired from clinical practice at HICHC Dr. Kunz lives in Volcano on the Island of Hawaii with his wife Kathleen Mishina. They and their three adult children continue to enjoy hiking and camping from the mountains to the ocean, from the windward to the leeward side.