• NPAC responded to the NIH HEAL Initiative’s Request for Information (RFI) on how the Initiative can better address the unmet needs of people with pain.

• In August, NPAC became one of 48 organizations officially endorsing The Long COVID Research Moonshot Act of 2024, which provides $1 billion in mandatory funding per year for 10 years to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support long COVID research, the pursuit of treatments, and the expansion of care. NPAC also supported the House version of the bill.

• NPAC responded to an NIH ENGAGE Request for Information (RFI) on how to to increase public engagement in clinical research and to promote accountability, transparency, and responsiveness to community needs. 

• NPAC’s Executive Director organized, moderated, and presented two symposiums at the 50th World Congress on Pain in Amsterdam: Getting Pain on the Policy Agenda: Perspectives from Canada, the U.S., Thailand, and the World Health Organization and Patient Partner Inclusion: The Present and Future of Pain Research.

• NPAC’s Executive Director, Kate Nicholson and Science & Policy Advisory, Dr. Hance Clarke, delivered a symposium on translating research into effective messaging on pain at the Canadian Pain Society’s Annual Scientific Meeting in Ottawa.

• NPAC’s Executive Director, Kate Nicholson and Science and Policy Advisor, Dr. Hance Clarke, also the President of the Canadian Pain Society, met with the Honourable Minister Ya'ara Saks following the National Congress on Pain in Ottawa on advancing the agenda on pain in Canada.

• NPAC’s Executive Director, Kate Nicholson participated in a Board meeting for the NIH PURPOSE network, which is charged with building the pain workforce.

• At the second annual PURPOSE meeting, NPAC’s Executive Director, Kate Nicholson participated in a panel discussion about the future of pain research, presented awards to emerging researchers, and discussed how to present research to policymakers and the media. 

• NPAC’s Executive Director, Kate Nicholson participated in the National Advisory Neurological Orders and Stroke Council Meeting in Bethesda, Maryland. 

• In May, the Department of Health and Human Services issued the final implementing regulation for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which covers nondiscrimination in healthcare in federal programs programs and federal contractors and is the first update to the regulation in forty years. The updated regulation contains an expanded section on access to medical care that NPAC commented on during the rulemaking process.

• NPAC Board Members Dawn M. Gibson and Ola Ojewumi attended the Borealis Philanthropy Disability Inclusion Fund convening in Chicago. Borealis Philanthropy generously funds NPAC.

• NPAC Community Leadership Council members Charis Hill and Sonya Huber presented at the 2024 NIH Pain Consortium Meeting about their lived experience of pain and its intersection with gender and gender identity. 

• NPAC’s Executive Director, Kate Nicholson taped two presentations for a side event hosted by the International Association for the Study of Pain at the World Health Assembly in Geneva.  The event was in support of a pending global resolution on pain treatment. 

• NPAC’s Executive Director, Kate Nicholson, and Board President, Juan Hincapie-Castillo, presented at the annual scientific meeting of the U.S. Association for the Study of Pain, delivering the symposium, Getting Pain on the Policy Agenda: Why Advocacy Matters and How to Do It.

• NPAC’s Executive Director addressed the Canadian Pain Society’s Annual Scientific Meeting in Ottawa.

• NPAC Community Leadership Council Member Quána Madison represented NPAC as a Lived Experience Expert at the National Institutes of Health Workshop on Advancing Health Equity in Pain Management.

• NPAC’s Executive Director Kate Nicholson spoke at the Institute of Honor’s Symposium at Washington and Lee University on Addiction and Alienation in America: Corporate Responsibility and the Opioid Crisis presenting the perspective of pain and medical ethics.

• NPAC’s Executive Director spoke as part of a web series on Navigating Careers in Research for the NIH PURPOSE project on a joint US-EU project to establish core outcome measures (COS) for research for acute pain, chronic pain, episodic pain, and acute to chronic pain translation.

• NPAC’s Executive Director participated as a panelist in the HEAL Connections Sharing Session, Communicating for Impact: Getting Your Research in the Media, a skills-building webinar designed to help train researchers to translate their work to the media.

• NPAC's Executive Director and Board Secretary, Dawn M. Gibson, kicked off the meeting of a new collective called the Pain Collaborative to Advance Equitable Value-Based Solutions by asking what it means to take an equity-based and person-centered approach to pain care.

• NPAC’s Executive Director joined Edward Freeman as a guest on his Stakeholder Podcast. Freeman is an American philosopher and professor of business administration at the Darden School of the University of Virginia known for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics.