A core recommendation of the 2011 IOM Report: Relieving Pain in America(pdf, 762 KB) is (Recommendation 2-2): "The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services should develop a comprehensive, population health-level strategy for pain prevention, treatment, management, education, reimbursement, and research that includes specific goals, actions, time frames, and resources."
The IOM report highlighted specific objectives for the strategy:
- Describe how efforts across government agencies, including public– private partnerships, can be established, coordinated, and integrated to encourage population-focused research, education, communication, and community-wide approaches that can help reduce pain and its consequences and remediate disparities in the experience of pain among subgroups of Americans.
- Include an agenda for developing physiological, clinical, behavioral, psychological, outcomes, and health services research and appropriate links across these domains.
- Improve pain assessment and management programs within the service delivery and financing programs of the federal government.
- Proceed in cooperation with the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee and the National Institutes of Health’s Pain Consortium and reach out to private-sector participants as appropriate.
- Involve the appropriate agencies and entities.
- Include ongoing efforts to enhance public awareness about the nature of chronic pain and the role of self-care in its management.
The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health and the National Institutes of Health of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services hosted the webinar "Implementation of the National Pain Strategy Listening Session" on May 11, 2017. To read a summary of the meeting visit the Implementation of the National Pain Strategy (NPS) Listening Session page.