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Transcript
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Dr. Nora Volkow: The Pain Consortium started because we all recognize that pain appears in all of the disease categories whether it is the brain whether it's that heart whether it is the joint.
All of the Institutes have an involvement with pain.
The Institute of Medicine says that there are more than a hundred million Americans currently suffering from chronic pain.
NIDA is very much involved by with pain research because one of the main medications that we have for the treatment of pain are opiate medications but opiate medications also have the potential for abuse diversion and addiction.
The Pain Consortium support has enriched the type of research that we do at NIDA and it has also allow us to do initiative that otherwise may have not been possible.
For example in partnership with several Institutes we have mounted a Center of Excellence for the development of curriculum on the education of screening on proper management of pain but in the health care system whether it is physicians dentists pharmacists nurses.
Our aim should be to provide on interventions instead of creating the expectation that the pain has to completely disappear.
Many physicians would work with their patients to come to an agreement that the pain medication will allow them to have less pain, they will still feel some but in a way that you would they will be able to perform properly.
And that use of that pain medication without alternative interventions which may go from meditation in order for them to help them manage their pain better as opposed to relying just on a medication to take away any of that discomfort.