Membership

Special Interest Groups

Pain and Disparities

Award in Recognition of Outstanding Research on Minorities & Underserved Populations

Introduction

The Pain and Disparities Special Interest Group (SIG) requests the support of the American Pain Society (APS) in establishing an award to recognize one of the important elements reflected in the mission of the SIG: To promote advocacy, education, policies, programs, and research to eliminate the unequal burden of pain among racial and ethnic minorities and underserved populations in order to optimize the quality of life for all persons with pain. The proposed award would recognize outstanding research that is presented at each annual APS meeting by early-career investigators. While the obvious purpose of the award is to recognize research achievements that speak to the mission of the SIG, another purpose is to encourage junior investigators in this important area of study.

I. Criteria for Eligibility
  1. Any poster or presentation that is presented at the APS annual meeting.
  2. Research that is presented by students, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty.
II. Criteria for Evaluation of Research

The primary factors to be considered in evaluating research for this award will include:

  1. The rigor of the research and analytic methodology
  2. The clinical and/or policy relevance of the research for addressing pain disparities
  3. The innovativeness and/or potential impact of the research
III. Process for Evaluation of Research
  1. An awards committee will be established and will be comprised of three members of the SIG steering committee, one of which will be the SIG chair.
  2. The awards committee will preview abstracts of research to be presented at the annual meeting as part of the standard pre-conference review that is associated with the development of the flyer that is customarily distributed by the SIG for each meeting.
  3. Based upon a review of the abstracts, the awards committee will identify the top 25% of conference submissions that speak to the criteria described above.
  4. The awards committee will evaluate each of the latter submissions at the conference, scoring them according to the criteria described above.
  5. In the case of a tie in ratings, the tie will be broken by majority vote of the awards committee. Should the awards committee be unable to reach a decision, the final decision will rest with the chair of the SIG.
  6. The recipient of the award will be recognized at the annual meeting of the SIG with a plaque that honors the recipient. In the case of a multi-author project, the award will be presented to the first author.
Request
  1. The SIG requests the formal support of the APS in developing this award.
  2. The SIG requests funding at the level of $100-$150 in order to purchase a plaque that can be awarded to the recipient of the award. This funding would be requested on an ongoing basis as the SIG would like to establish this award for each annual meeting.

Disparities in Pain Management Index