Dr. Howard Kornfeld, the Bay Area pain specialist whose help a representative for Prince sought before the legendary musician’s death, has long been an advocate of using a painkiller that’s less addictive than many of the opioids that have led to an epidemic of abuse.

He spoke exclusively to The Chronicle on Wednesday.

Kornfeld, who runs Recovery Without Walls, an outpatient pain and addiction treatment clinic in Mill Valley, drew national media attention after his attorney confirmed that Kornfeld had planned to meet with Prince on April 22. Kornfeld never got the chance because the 57-year-old star was found dead the day before at Paisley Park, his Minnesota home.

The nationally known specialist’s involvement sheds additional light into the last days of Prince, whose death is reportedly being investigated as possibly related to opioid use. An autopsy was conducted shortly after he was found dead, but results have not been released.

Lamenting stigma

“If this disease was not stigmatized, patients would seek care earlier and there would be less deaths,” Kornfeld told The Chronicle. He spoke by phone from his Mill Valley home, having rescheduled patients at his clinic after news of his involvement in the case broke.

Kornfeld advocates the use of buprenorphine, a 50-year-old semisynthetic opioid, for both pain and weaning patients off stronger opioids, like Vicodin, oxycodone or Percocet. Law enforcement officials and other sources have told news outlets that opioids, including Percocet, were found at the singer’s home and that Prince struggled with addiction.

Research urged

While Kornfeld declined to discuss anything related to the singer, he said he wanted to speak out to encourage more research into finding ways to treat and manage pain and addiction.

“This isn’t a problem that should be solved by commercial industry,” he said, referring to pharmaceutical companies’ investment in pain medications. “This is a national epidemic that needs to be prioritized, just as the AIDS epidemic was prioritized.”

In a news conference Wednesday, Minneapolis attorney William Mauzy detailed how Kornfeld’s 26-year-old son Andrew, a pre-med student who works with his father, traveled to Minnesota on April 20, the night before the singer was found dead, to meet with Prince the next morning. The elder Kornfeld, unable to immediately make the trip, had sent his son to encourage the singer to seek treatment. Howard Kornfeld planned to arrive April 22.

But Prince’s body was found the morning of April 21 in the elevator of his home. Mauzy described how Prince’s representatives were unable to find the musician after Andrew Kornfeld arrived, and how Kornfeld made a 911 call after the body was discovered.

Too late to help

Mauzy also confirmed that Andrew Kornfeld was carrying a small amount of buprenorphine, but the drug was not administered.

“Dr. Kornfeld was never able to meet Prince, never talked to Prince and, sadly, (was) unable to arrive in time to help Prince,” Mauzy said.

Dr. John Mendelson, senior scientist at the Addiction and Pharmacology Research Laboratory in San Francisco, said that Kornfeld is nationally renowned for his work in addiction and that he’s not surprised Prince’s camp reached out to him.

“He would have been the logical person to reach out to,” Mendelson said. “He’s discreet, he’s rapid and he obviously dispatched someone right away. That’s Howard.”

Mendelson, who is the medical director of a San Francisco methadone clinic, also supports the use of buprenorphine, saying it saves lives. Many addiction specialists use the drug because it does not produce the euphoric highs of other opioids that lead to addiction.

Seeking help from Kornfeld does not mean that Prince necessarily had an addiction problem, Mendelson said. Instead, he could have been trying to avoid one.

“It could imply he’s having a pain management problem and was worried about becoming dependent,” he said.

Problem in spotlight

Kornfeld, who also runs a pain clinic at Oakland’s Highland Hospital, said new prescribing guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Obama administration’s $1.1 billion investment in fighting the heroin and prescription drug abuse epidemic have cast a brighter spotlight on the problem.

But he worries that isn’t enough. He’s concerned that the new guidelines will discourage physicians from properly treating pain, and that some patients will be abruptly cut off. “Some of these patients will look for and find heroin,” he said.

Kornfeld also advocates an approach that includes exercise, nutrition, psychotherapy and other alternatives to drugs. “Our overall goal is get people off of buprenorphine, and off of all drugs,” he said.

Victoria Colliver is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vcolliver@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @vcolliver