Engaging people with lived experiences of pain enhances pain care research by identifying research questions most important and relevant to those experiencing chronic pain.
Most veterans with chronic pain are confronting many physical and mental issues happening at the same time. Drs Rosen and Martino talk with PMC about using M2VA case managers to connect veterans coming into the VA Healthcare system with a broad array of resources and services related to pain management.
We compared operational definitions (ICD9/10) that targeted a non-VA research setting (PROUD), a VA research setting (Seal et al., 2019) and non-research quality measurement system, the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) and determined that there was overlap across SUD sub-categories of opioid use disorder, alcohol use disorder, other substance used disorders. Based on this review, Primary Care Opioid Use Disorders Treatment Trial (PROUD) was recommended as the phenotype for the PMC-3.
An early challenge was to ensure that PMC researchers across the 11 national, large-scale pain trials did not co-enroll participants in multiple, concurrent pain trials. Learn about the strategies developed to address this challenge.
Marc Rosen, MD, and Steve Martino, PhD, joined PMC to talk about their SBIRT trial which is studying the engagement of Veterans in pain management options when they seek Comp & Pen.
As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the PMC adapted its research as needed to continue its progress in advancing research on nonpharmacological pain management during this unprecedented disruption in research, healthcare, and everyday routines that affect how people live with pain.
Recently, a multidisciplinary group of leading experts in pain updated the definition of “pain” on behalf of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). Particularly relevant is the acknowledgement that pain is a personal, subjective and multidimensional experience that can be shaped by a range of biological, psychological and social factors.
Objectively measuring psychosocial, functional, financial, and lifestyle factors and studying their relationship with outcomes is especially important in studies investigating health conditions, such as pain, that are known to be exacerbated by heightened periods of stress and anxiety – an emotion shared by many during this unprecedented time.