UNM Selected by NIH as One of 11 Centers of Excellence in Pain Education

The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico recently was named by the NIH Pain Con­sor­tium as one of 11 Cen­ters of Excel­lence in Pain Edu­ca­tion (CoEPE). UNM Col­lege of Nursing’s Robin Meize-Grochowski, pro­fes­sor and Ph.D. pro­gram direc­tor, is the prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor and project direc­tor who will over­see the evolv­ing curricula.

CoEPEs will act as hubs for the devel­op­ment, eval­u­a­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of pain man­age­ment cur­ricu­lum resources for med­ical, den­tal, nurs­ing and phar­macy schools to enhance and improve how health care pro­fes­sion­als are taught about pain and its treat­ment. UNM joins a select group of insti­tu­tions includ­ing Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton, UC San Fran­cisco, Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land, Har­vard and oth­ers with the spe­cial designation.

“We’re excited about the col­lab­o­ra­tive approach of this ini­tia­tive, both within UNM’s Health Sci­ences Cen­ter and with the other 10 NIH Cen­ters of Excel­lence in Pain Edu­ca­tion,” states Meize-Grochowski. “In addi­tion to our inter­pro­fes­sional team from UNM’s col­leges of Nurs­ing and Phar­macy, and School of Med­i­cine, our pro­posal was com­pet­i­tive because of our exper­tise with online deliv­ery of courses and our part­ner­ing with UNM’s Project ECHO Pain Clinic, which has been des­ig­nated by the Amer­i­can Pain Soci­ety as a Clin­i­cal Cen­ter of Excel­lence in Pain Management.

“While Project ECHO’s Pain Clinic pro­vides prac­tic­ing clin­i­cians with evidence-based edu­ca­tion resources, the NIH-designated CoEPEs will focus on pro­vid­ing such mate­ri­als to stu­dents in the health sci­ences. We will draw upon our experts in nurs­ing, phar­macy, geri­atrics, inte­gra­tive med­i­cine, cur­ricu­lum, tech­nol­ogy, and teach­ing in the devel­op­ment of learn­ing mod­ules and case-based sce­nar­ios related to pain man­age­ment in older adults, our pro­posed focus for UNM’s CoEPE.”

Chronic pain affects approx­i­mately 100 mil­lion Amer­i­cans, cost­ing up to $635 bil­lion in med­ical treat­ment and lost pro­duc­tiv­ity, and pro­duc­ing immea­sur­able suf­fer­ing for peo­ple of every age. Yet, pain treat­ment is not taught exten­sively in many health pro­fes­sional schools, and clin­i­cal approaches can be inconsistent.

The cur­ric­ula devel­oped by the 11 CoEPEs will advance the assess­ment, diag­no­sis, and safe treat­ment of a wide vari­ety of pain con­di­tions while min­i­miz­ing the abuse of opi­oid pain reliev­ers. Types of pain of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to the NIH Pain Con­sor­tium are reha­bil­i­ta­tion pain, arthri­tis and mus­cu­loskele­tal pain, neu­ro­pathic pain, and headache pain.

In addi­tion, the cur­ric­ula will teach about the patho­phys­i­ol­ogy and phar­ma­col­ogy of pain and its treat­ment, the lat­est research in com­ple­men­tary and inte­gra­tive pain man­age­ment, fac­tors that con­tribute to both under– and over-prescribing of pain med­ica­tions, and how pain man­i­fests itself dif­fer­ently by gen­der, in chil­dren, in older adults and in diverse populations.

The new Cen­ters of Excel­lence in Pain Edu­ca­tion selected by the NIH Pain Con­sor­tium include:

Ø Uni­ver­sity of New Mexico

Ø Uni­ver­sity of Washington

Ø Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia Perel­man School of Medicine

Ø South­ern Illi­nois University

Ø Uni­ver­sity of Rochester

Ø Har­vard School of Den­tal Medicine

Ø Uni­ver­sity of Alabama at Birmingham

Ø Thomas Jef­fer­son Uni­ver­sity School of Medicine

Ø Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, San Francisco

Ø Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land, and

Ø Uni­ver­sity of Pittsburgh.

In addi­tion to Meize-Grochowski, other UNM Health Sci­ences Cen­ter per­son­nel named in the appli­ca­tion are Geoff Shus­ter, DNSc, RN, Emily Hao­zous, Ph.D., RN, Anne Mattarella, BS, and Ale­jan­dro Flo­res, BS, from the Col­lege of Nurs­ing; Melanie Dodd, PharmD, from the Col­lege of Phar­macy; Jean­nie Boyle, MSN, RN from Project ECHO; Carla J. Her­man, M.D., MPH, and Arti Prasad, M.D.; from the School of Med­i­cine; and Deana Richter, MA, from Teacher & Edu­ca­tional Devel­op­ment. Addi­tional con­tent experts from the Health Sci­ences Cen­ter will be involved in the devel­op­ment of the cur­ric­u­lar materials.

The NIH Pain Con­sor­tium was estab­lished to enhance pain research and pro­mote col­lab­o­ra­tion among researchers across the many NIH Insti­tutes and Cen­ters that have pro­grams and activ­i­ties address­ing pain. Its goals include the devel­op­ment of a com­pre­hen­sive and forward-thinking pain research agenda for the NIH; to iden­tify key oppor­tu­ni­ties in pain research within NIH and the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity; to increase vis­i­bil­ity for pain research; and to pur­sue the pain research agenda through Public-Private part­ner­ships. For more infor­ma­tion on the NIH Pain Con­sor­tium, visit http://painconsortium.nih.gov/index.html. For more infor­ma­tion on UNM’s Col­lege of Nurs­ing, visit http://nursing.unm.edu/.