Publications
APS Bulletin • Volume 18, Number 3, 2008
President’s Message
Charles E. Inturrisi, PhD
Board Takes Action in Key Areas
The APS Board of Directors and staff met on November 1, 2008, at the national office in Glenview, IL. The day-long meeting began with a review of the recommendations from a focus group of members that was conducted at the APS Annual Meeting in May and the Corporate Member Advisory meeting, which took place last August. The board revisited the priorities from these recommendations during the discussion of APS’s current strategic plan’s goals.
The board examined every priority of the strategic plan from at least three perspectives: Do we still have enthusiasm for the priority? Is it still doable? Do we have the funds to accomplish the goal? When we agreed to continue to implement a goal we also identified a board member to act as a liaison and champion for the goal and other APS members to assist us in carrying out the objective and developing ways to measure the outcome.
Increasing Support for Pain Research
One of the four priority areas of the strategic plan is increasing support for pain research. The board approved an opportunity to partner with the Princeton, NJ-based Rita Allen Foundation (RAF) which has supported basic research since the mid 1970s. Thanks to collaboration and support from Kathleen Foley, MD, APS will incorporate the Rita Allen Award for Basic Research in Pain into the APS award portfolio. APS will advertise the award and manage the application process and a joint committee of the RAF and APS (each an APS member) will review the applications. We expect to announce the application process by December 11, 2008, and award the first two grants of $50,000 per year for 3 years by April of 2009. Over the next 3 years the APS-RAF collaboration could award up to $900,000 of RAF support to six researchers. This award complements and extends APS’s very successful current small grants program. In addition, we anticipate that this collaboration—between a foundation interested in supporting pain research and APS—will serve as a model for other foundations to partner with APS in additional areas of pain research represented by our members.
The board also approved a proposal to develop multiple pain initiatives that, with the support of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Pain Consortium, would result in the addition of chronic pain research to the NIH Roadmap. With this approach, we hope to provide an additional source of funds for research that would not compete with the already meager extramural support provided to both basic and clinical pain research. Based on an APS sponsored survey (Bradshaw et al., 2008), extramural support for pain research has declined to less than 0.5% of the NIH budget. The addition of chronic pain as a priority area on the NIH Roadmap would also provide some visibility to an area that is not represented by a single NIH Institute but is spread among several institutes such that applications for support of pain research are reviewed by more than 15 different study sections.
The pain initiative that attracted the most discussion during the meeting was the development of a chronic pain roadmap that would involve APS, government organizations, and industry. This initiative would be modeled on the Healthy Brain Initiative: A National Public Health Road Map to Maintaining Cognitive Health, www.cdc.gov/Aging/healthybrain.htm, developed by the Alzheimer’s Association (AA) together with the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute on Aging. This initiative is highlighted by a meeting each year that brings together all the major stakeholders from areas involved in Alzheimer’s research—basic and clinical, academic, government, and industry—to exchange ideas and create a map of all the current targets for research and treatment. APS is in contact with the AA to explore how we might adapt this model to our needs.
The third APS research priority seeks to facilitate the participation of APS members in the NIH review process. This past summer in APS E-News we surveyed members about their past and current service on NIH study sections that review pain applications. We found, not surprisingly given the large number of study sections that review pain grants, that APS members were underrepresented. However, more than 70% of respondents indicated that they would willingly serve on a study section that reviews pain grants. With the support of Linda Porter, program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and board liaison Kathleen Sluka, the board approved an initiative to create a simple mechanism that allows APS members to share information about their research expertise with the administrators of NIH study sections who are looking for qualified individuals to review pain applications. As soon as this tool is ready, we will announce it to members who then can apply to serve.
Defining Interdisciplinary Pain Care
In an effort to expand the knowledge and practice of high-quality interdisciplinary care among all stakeholders, the board established a task force to develop a white paper defining interdisciplinary care as it is outlined in our Clinical Centers of Excellence (CCOE) in Pain Management Award program. Steve Biddle, our education director, also is exploring ways to develop Web-based educational programs to disseminate best practices gleaned from the CCOE program awardees.
Advocating for Better Regulations
In the advocacy area, the board approved the development of an APS policy agenda that enunciates the needed balance between risk management requirements (for those who prescribe, dispense, and use opioids) and patients in pain who need appropriate access to opioids. APS seeks to collaborate will all stakeholders, including the Food and Drug Administration, so that we can prevent the unintended consequences that a poorly devised risk management program has on millions of patients in pain who responsibly use opioids. Board members Greg Terman and David Craig will lead this agenda.
Look for updates on all of these strategic priorities in future issues of the Bulletin and in APS E-News.
Reference
Bradshaw, D. H. Empy, C., Davis, P., Lipschitz, D., Nakamura, Y., & Chapman, C.R. (2008). Trends in funding for research on pain: A report on the National Institutes of Health grant awards over the years 2003-2007. The Journal of Pain, 9(12), 1077-1087.