Canadian Pain Management Forums

Painaustralia CEO Carol Bennett was honoured to be invited by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s to the ‘Best Brain Exchange’, a meeting that brought senior policy makers together with research and implementation experts to discuss the development of a provincial plan for pain management in Nova Scotia.

Carol’s presentation addressed the pathways to achieving a national approach to pain management, its challenges and the progress we have made in Australia so far.

Painaustralia was also invited by Health Canada to participate in the Canadian Pain Task Force Atlantic Regional Workshop also held in Halifax.

Recognising the impacts and challenges faced by one in five Canadians who live with chronic pain, Health Canada established the Canadian Pain Task Force to provide advice regarding evidence and best practices for the prevention and management of chronic pain. The Taskforce has a three year mandate to:

• Assess how chronic pain is currently addressed in Canada;

• Conduct national consultation and review available evidence to identify best and leading practices, potential areas for improvements, and elements of an improved approach to the prevention and management of chronic pain in Canada;

• Collaborate with key stakeholder, including the chronic pain community, federal, provincial, and territorial governments, health professionals, researchers, educators and Indigenous populations, to disseminate information related to best practices for the prevention and management of chronic pain (e.g. women, older Canadians, Indigenous populations, children, veterans).

The taskforce will deliver three reports to Health Canada, one for each of the three elements of their mandate.

The Canadian Pain Task Force is working to gather information and ideas regarding activities that support the prevention and management of chronic pain. For this regional workshop, the Taskforce was specifically looking to capture:

• Best, promising, and emerging practices related to access to care, surveillance and monitoring, education and training, and research;

• Regional needs and existing gaps and barriers to successful development, implementation and evaluation of best practices; and,

• Activities to enable spread of best practices across jurisdictions to better address the needs of Canadians impacted by chronic pain.

We look forward to seeing further progress by Canada towards best practice pain management.