Partner Engagement Work Group
Establishing and fostering respectful and productive partnerships consistent among Veterans and Military Service Members and their dependents, health systems including clinicians and clinical leaders, policy makers, and researchers is important to ensure the success of the pragmatic clinical trials and the overall impact of the Pain Management Collaboratory. Partner engagement is indispensable for generating trustworthy, valid findings that are relevant and impactful to Veterans and Military Service Members and their dependents with pain, their health care teams, and health system leaders. The Partner Engagement Work Group is chaired by faculty experts in partner engagement in pragmatic clinical trials and supported by an experienced project manager, with members who represent the PMC pragmatic clinical trial teams. The Work Group aims to develop and enact a comprehensive, evidence-based, and partner-informed approach to address identified organizational, clinical, and patient level barriers to access, engagement, and participation in pragmatic clinical trials of nonpharmacological approaches for the management of pain and co-occurring conditions and to optimize the VA and DOD as learning health care systems. Ultimately, a well-engage network of partners contributes to the relevance and translational impact of pragmatic clinical trials, advancing the potential for meaningful improvements in healthcare delivery and patient outcomes.
Chair or Co-Chairs:
Lori Bastian
Steven Cohen
Project Manager:
Lily Katsovich
Work Group Goals
- Develop respectful and productive partnerships
- Generate trustworthy, internally valid findings directly relevant to Veterans and Military Service members with pain, front-line primary care clinicians and health care teams, and health system leaders
- Address barriers to access, engagement and participation in pragmatic clinical trials studying nonpharmacological approaches for the management of pain and common co-occurring conditions
- Optimize the VA and DoD as learning health care systems
Work Group Co-Chairs – Qualifications and Experience
Lori Bastian, M.D., M.P.H. is Director of the PRIME Center and Chief of General Internal Medicine at VACHS and Professor of Internal Medicine at Yale University. She has an extensive background as a primary care provider and health services and behavioral medicine investigator in VA, including specific focused interests in pain and comorbidities, women veterans’ health, and the conduct of multi-site effectiveness trials. As Director of the PRIME Center, she chairs an Executive Steering Committee that is comprised of key VA stakeholders (e.g., Drs. Sandbrink and Kilbourne) and external partners (Dr. Jennifer Haythornthwaite, a leading pain researcher from Johns Hopkins), as well as a veteran representative (Mr. Anicich), among other stakeholders. She also oversees the management of a national network of over 80 VA, DoD and NIH pain investigators who share interests in improving pain care for veterans and military service members that meets monthly via teleconference. She is also responsible for the collaboration with CIDER described above.
Steven P. Cohen, M.D. is Professor of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine, Neurology, and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Chief of Pain Medicine and Director of Clinical Operations at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (JHMI), and Professor and Director of the Pain Management Focus Area of the CRSR, and Director of Pain Research at WRNMMC. Dr. Cohen is widely recognized as a leading researcher in the area of pain medicine, with specific expertise in the conduct of efficacy and comparative-effectiveness trials targeting common pain medicine procedures.
