January/February 2025

• NPAC Submitted an extensive public comment on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s proposal to evaluate the impact of its 2022 Prescribing Guidelines.

• NPAC joined the Medicaid Day of Action and continues with advocacy efforts to protect the health safety net.

• NPAC’s Executive Director, Dr. Tamara Baker, and Dr. Monica Mallampalli participated in the NIH Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee meetings.

• NPAC’s Executive Director participated in a governing board meeting for the NIH PURPOSE program.

• NPAC’s President and Executive Director planned a 3-hour Advocacy Training Session for scientists and clinicians for the upcoming Scientific Meeting of the US Association for the Study of Pain (USASP).

• NPAC will also offer Symposia at the upcoming scientific meetings of the European Pain Federation (EFIC) (on data harmonization) and the Canadian Pain Society (CPS) (one on pain and human rights, and one on building resilience in pain and substance use disorders).

• NPAC Advisor Mara Baer was interviewed regarding chronic pain for the report on Aging by the Alliance for Health Policy.

• NPAC’s Executive Director spoke with Alyssa Quart for Time magazine about Health Insecurity.

• NPAC advisor Dr. Stefan Kertesz was featured in an article about opioid prescribing.

• NPAC’s Executive Director co-authored a Lessons Learned paper for Pain Medicine on the INTEGRATE-Pain global Delphi study to develop core outcome measures for acute, chronic, acute to chronic translation, and episodic pain.

November/December 2024

• NPAC’s Executive Director attended the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council fall meeting in Bethesda, Maryland.

• NPAC’s Executive Director attended the fall governing board meeting for the NIH PURPOSE program, which endeavors to build the pain workforce.

• Several members of NPAC were invited to join or chair strategic planning subcommittees to set research priorities for the NIH HEAL Initiative, the money allocated by Congress for pain and use disorders, including Dr. Tamara Baker, Quána Madison, and Kate Nicholson.

• NPAC welcomed former Colorado Senator Joan Ginal to its Board of Directors. 

  Senator Ginal sponsored SB 144, Prescription Drugs for Chronic Pain, the bill NPAC worked on that became law in 2023.

• NPAC Executive Director spoke on legal and policy issues at the Southern Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting.

• NPAC’s Executive Director, Kate Nicholson, received the Southern Pain Society’s President’s Distinguished Service Award. 

• NPAC’s Executive Director addressed Pain Management at the First Annual Convening of the Pain Collaborative. 

September/October 2024

• NPAC advisors Dr. Monica Mallampalli and Dr. Tamara Baker and Executive Director Kate Nicholson attended the winter meeting of the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee. 

• Several NPAC members spoke during consecutive half-day workshops hosted by the NIH HEAL Pain Research Priorities Subcommittees related to HEAL strategic planning, including Dr. Sean Mackey , Dr. Tamara Baker, Quána Madison, and Kate Nicholson.

• NPAC’s Executive Director met with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Forum on Aging, Disability, and Independence. 

• NPAC’s Executive Director spoke about pain patient abandonment at the CATO Institute. 

• NPAC held meetings related to studies, including a national study on pain funded by Cornell Weil, the CSI: Opioids Study on suicide and pain, and a potential PCORI study regarding pain management in older adults.

• NPAC participated in a meeting for the US Association for the Study of Pain Advocacy Committee.

July/August 2024

• NPAC responded to the NIH HEAL Initiative’s Request for Information (RFI) related to strategic planning 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.

May/June 2024

• 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, 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 delivered a talk on 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 and federal contractors and is the first update to the regulation in forty years. The updated regulation contains an expanded section on medical care that NPAC commented on during the rulemaking process.

  • NPAC Board Members Dawn M. Gibson and Ola Ojewumi attended the Borealis Philanthropy convening in Chicago.

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

  • 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. 

March/April 2024

• 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 a National Institutes of Health Workshop.

• 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.  

• 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.

January/February 2024

• NPAC successfully testified to support the removal of the Opioid Dosage Threshold for Chronic Noncancer Pain from 2026 Quality Standards for the MEDICAID/CHIP program due to the risk of patient harm. The MEDICAID/CHIP advisory committee voted to remove this provision.

• NPAC partnered with other disability rights organizations to oppose the Census Bureau's proposal to change questions about disability in the 2025 census. The new questions were likely to reduce current estimates of people living with disabilities in the US in ways that could undermine everything from funding to services. The Census Bureau agreed to retain the current questions for 2025.

• NPAC’s Executive Director spoke at the 5th Annual NIH HEAL Initiative Scientific Meeting on the importance of translating and disseminating science to people living with pain and their families.

• NPAC’s Executive Director participated in her first two-day meeting as a subject matter expert for the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council (Council).

• NPAC worked with lawyers at the Legal Action Center on how to evaluate legal claims related to healthcare abandonment and termination of medication. 

• NPAC collaborated with Spondylitis Association to deliver a symposium that included talks by Dr. Samina Ali, Dr. Tamara Baker, Dr. Monica Mallampalli, and Kate Nicholson.

November/December 2023

• NPAC’s Executive Director met with policymakers on Capitol Hill regarding recent federal legislation related to pain

• As part of ongoing implementation efforts for S.B. 144, a Colorado law protecting people with pain who require opioids, NPAC’s ED published The Last Word in Colorado Medicine, the magazine of the Colorado Medical Society.

• NPAC submitted a formal comment in response to the Department of Health and Human Services’s proposed rule updating the regulation under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The comment addressed discrimination in medical treatment.

• NPAC submitted formal comments on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s proposal to reduce the overall supply of certain controlled medications.

• NPAC drafted talking points that were distributed to the harm reduction/drug policy community on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s proposed rule urging public comment. 

• NPAC submitted a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate HELP Committee in Support of the Advancing Research for Chronic Pain Act and advising the committee on pain. 

September/October 2023

• NPAC’s ED presented at the European Pain Federation’s 2023 Congress on a global initiative to establish core research domains for pain. She spoke about involving people living with pain, whose votes were weighted equally to those of researchers and clinicians. 

• NPAC was selected to present at the Drug Enforcement Administration’s listening Session on Telemedicine Prescribing. NPAC’s President provided its testimony.

• NPAC successfully advocated with The Board of Pharmacy Specialties (BPS) to create a new specialty in pain management pharmacy. 

• NPAC’s Executive Director, Kate Nicholson, and Science and Policy Advisors, Baker and Mallampalli, participated in the fall meeting of the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee.

• NPAC’s Executive Director joined the governing board of NIH PURPOSE, a new initiative to build the pain workforce and support collaboration among researchers.

• NPAC’s Executive Director spoke in Washington, D.C., to the 2023 Mayday Pain and Society Fellows on strategies for advocacy and policy change.

• NPAC’s Executive Director met with policymakers on Capitol Hill regarding recent federal legislation related to pain.

July/August 2023

• NPAC worked with the Colorado Medical Society to Implement S.B.144, the Colorado law we supported, by writing about the law in county and state-level provider newsletters and speaking on medical podcasts.

• NPAC’s Executive Director and President were appointed to the advocacy council of the US Association for the Study of Pain (USASP.)

• NPAC worked on a video story in the New York Times that featured Dawn Gibson on how patients who require opioids face impediments to care.

• As part of its partnership with HEAL Connections, NPAC spoke on a learning session panel regarding storytelling for NIH researchers. 

• NPAC spoke on Crisis Jam, a broadcast dedicated to suicide prevention.

• NPAC participated in a podcast mini-series offering four recordings on the overdose crisis: two with a focus on pain and two with a focus on addiction.

• NPAC spoke on pain and mental health on a panel for Pain Canada.

• NPAC did a podcast episode for the Opioid REMS training offering a provider and patient perspective.

• NPAC spoke on Off/Kilter Podcast with Rebecca Vallas of The Century Foundation about advocating people living with pain.