Helping
People in Pain,
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@a time
Waiting for the U.S. government to enact change is like watching snails race. When our leaders approach an issue – such as the 116 million Americans who live with chronic pain – they tend to do so through committees, reports, and long documents, not action. by Alison Conte, Editor, The Chronicle
It was in 2011 that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released Relieving Pain in America: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education, and Research (see The Chronicle, December 2011). Five years later in March 2016, U.S. Health and Human Services followed an IOM recommendation and released a National Pain Strategy. The strategy suggested ways to: ✽ Reduce the number of people with pain ✽ Increase more effective treatment of pain ✽ Reduce the burden of chronic pain on society
What Does it Mean for You? “There are many core problems that are at the foundation of inadequate treatment of pain in this country,” said Penney Cowan, founder and executive director of the ACPA. “While this strategy supports our cause and spreads awareness, it doesn’t do much to help the individual person who has pain today.”
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CHRONICLE | AUGUST
2016
Cowan described the problems and gaps in pain treatment, which are all too familiar to those who live with pain. We need: ✽ To eliminate the stigma of having an invisible disease such as chronic pain ✽ Access to informed and compassionate pain specialists ✽ Funding for comprehensive, interdisciplinary pain treatment programs ✽ Medical school instruction in a balanced approach to pain treatment ✽ Greater emphasis on self-management and other alternatives to medication ✽ To reduce the demographic and geographic disparities in pain treatment ✽ Insurance reforms to control the increasing cost of pain care ✽ More government funding of research into pain and treatments