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APS
E-News Important Dates: Small Grants Program: Applications due July 21. Corporate Satellite Symposia: Proposals due July 26. 2007
Conference: Annual
Awards: In This Issue: APS Call for Symposia and Corporate Satellite Symposia APS 2006 Future Leaders in Pain Small Research Grants Program Call for 2007 Awards Nominations NIH Research Awards Information Search Engine News Highlights from The Journal of Pain NIH Grant Opportunity: New Models of Pain Relevant to the Trigeminal System (R01) Call
for Abstracts: 4th Annual Headache Research Summit
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| Acknowledgment:
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| American
Pain Society |
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The
Future of APS Is Now I recently returned from APS’s extremely successful annual meeting in San Antonio. I am renewed and invigorated, as I am sure all who attended will agree.
For the past 18 months, the board has gone through an extensive process of self-evaluation, reflecting on the past and directions for the future. The core values of any organization consist of a set of beliefs that form its basic philosophy, spirit, and driving force for all thinking, decision making, and actions. As the board proceeded, we agreed that the core values of APS are leadership (in research, education, practice, and policy), integrity, objectivity, integration, diversity, and interdisciplinary emphasis. These have not changed since our founding, and they will carry us forward into the future. Tremendous advances in knowledge have taken place since the founding of APS. With new information about pain and the mechanisms involved—anatomy, neurophysiology, neurochemistry, and psychology—comes an enlightened vision, a vision to which we can aspire. A world where prevention and relief of pain-related suffering are available to all people! Our mission supports our core values and attainment of our lofty vision. To accomplish this vision, the board crafted a revised mission statement. It reiterates who we are: “A multidisciplinary community that brings together a diverse group of scientists, clinicians, and other professionals.” And it states what we hope to achieve: “To increase the knowledge of pain and transform public policy and clinical practice to prevent or relieve pain-related suffering.” Our new mission statement supports APS’s position as a leader and shaper. Core values and a mission statement alone cannot move us toward our vision of prevention and relief of pain-related suffering for all. Toward that end, the board crafted an ambitious strategic plan, which holds tremendous promise. Outlined below, the initiatives are organized into four broad categories. Policy and Advocacy
Research
Education
You will hear more about these initiatives over the next 3 years. These activities will not replace the many ongoing APS initiatives, but will complement them. Reviewing these intitiatives is inspiring and at times breathtaking. There are at least two things that are required to move us toward our vision—money and human resources. Much more can be done to expand these resources and doing so will be an important target as we attempt to realize our strategic plan. Human resources—That’s you and me. The strategic plan requires people to carry out these initiatives. It cannot and will not be successful unless each member becomes involved and commits time and energy to the process. I look forward to the future with enthusiasm and keen anticipation. The future of APS is now!
APS Call for Symposia and Corporate Satellite Symposia
The Call for Paper and Poster Abstracts will be available online beginning September 1, 2006. The submission deadline for these abstracts is October 27, 2006.
APS 2006 Future Leaders in Pain Small Research Grants Program APS is pleased to announce the second annual Future Leaders in Pain Small Research Grants Program. This grant program was established to fund research projects of doctorally prepared investigators who have not yet attained NIH RO1 level funding. The program's intent is to encourage research in pain that will add to the body of knowledge and allow investigators to develop pilot data that will aid them in securing additional major grant funding. APS gratefully acknowledges Cephalon, Inc., and Endo Pharmaceuticals for their support of this program. With increased funding, APS is able to make five grants of $20,000 each in 2006. Proposed research projects should be in one of the following five areas of inquiry:
Applications are due July 21, 2006. Grant awards will be announced September 15, 2006. For additional information, contact APS at 847/375-4715 or info@ampainsoc.org.
Call for 2007 Awards Nominations The APS Awards Committee invites nominations for awards to be presented at the 26th Annual Scientific Meeting, May 2–5, 2007, in Washington, D.C. The committee solicits nominations for the following APS awards:
All nominations must be received by July 21, 2006. All members will receive a brochure and a nomination form shortly in the mail.
NIH Research Awards Information Search Engine During the recent May 2006 APS Board meeting, the board approved continuation of funding for a project at the University of Utah to collect National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding patterns for research on pain and related topics. David Bradshaw, Yoshio Nakamura, and Richard Chapman have developed an interactive information retrieval system that permits description and exploration of NIH funding patterns for research on pain and related topics. This system, NIH Research Awards Information Search Engine (NIHRAISE), extends the capabilities of the existing NIH public record system for grants, which only permits simple searches for matching terms on a record-by-record basis. NIHRAISE makes it possible to derive and analyze complex NIH funding patterns for pain and related subjects. It summarizes funding for specific areas of inquiry or particular institutes. NIHRAISE is a long-range effort with the following goals: (1) build and sustain an evidence base on NIH funding for pain and related topics; (2) make the evidence base available to users on the Internet; and (3) publish reports of information derived from the evidence base. The database will be updated annually and retrospective analyses will be undertaken to uncover patterns of funding over the previous 5 years. Although the primary purpose of NIHRAISE is to permit evaluation of NIH funding for pain research, it can also investigate funding for related topics such as palliative care, symptom management, and functional disorders. It is well suited for domains of inquiry that are inherently multidisciplinary and that encompass basic science as well as clinical and epidemiological research. This database will identify underfunded areas of pain research and ultimately help policy makers and those who shape the future of pain research.
News Highlights from The Journal of Pain
Parent
and Child Anxiety Sensitivity, Relationship to Children’s
Experimental Pain Responsivity Anxiety sensitivity (AS) is the tendency to interpret anxiety sensations, such as a rapid heartbeat, as a predictor of harmful outcomes. In adult studies, this fear of anxiety sensations has been associated with chronic pain and, in laboratory studies, women with high AS have shown increased experimental pain sensitivity. Some retrospective studies have found that childhood pain experiences correlate with high AS in adults. Further, parental perceptions of pain may influence how children perceive it. No studies to date have examined relationships among parent AS (PAS), child AS (CAS), and children’s responses to controlled pain stimuli. For this article, researchers evaluated 104 girls and 107 boys (mean age 12.4) and 178 mothers. They tested a conceptual model in which PAS would predict CAS. Thus, PAS would be related to child laboratory pain intensity by its contribution to CAS. The model was validated in girls but not boys. The authors noted their findings agree with prior research reporting significant associations between parental anxiety and child distress during painful medical procedures. They concluded that a parental tendency to interpret anxiety symptoms as dangerous may influence how healthy girls respond to painful stimuli. Hypervigilence
to Learned Pain Signals: A Componential Analysis For chronic pain patients, hypervigilance (attending to pain at the expense of other information) intensifies avoidance and escape tendencies. It emerges in anyone who is confronted with threatening pain and wants to avoid or escape it. In this study, subjects exposed to laboratory pain stimuli were evaluated to gain further understanding of hypervigilance during their anticipation of pain. The researchers concluded that hypervigilance emerged as enhanced engagement to conditioned pain signals, difficulty disengaging attention from conditioned pain signals, and rapidly responding to pain signals. These findings suggest that treatment approaches using attention techniques should not focus on preventing patients from shifting their attention to the pain, but on diminishing the threat value and learning to disengage from their pain. Does
Self-Efficacy Influence Leg Muscle Pain During Cycling Exercise? Little is known about the psychological influences on muscle pain during exercise. One reason to believe self-efficacy is a potential influence on muscle pain is that it is considered to be inversely related with ratings of perceived exertion during exercise. Also, there is a moderate to strong correlation between perceptions of exertion and muscle pain. The authors hypothesized that enhanced self-efficacy would be associated with lower ratings of naturally occurring muscle pain during exercise. Twenty-eight low or moderately active college-age women were randomly assigned to two groups to increase or decrease efficacy beliefs for engaging in moderate physical activity. Efficacy was manipulated with bogus feedback after an exercise test. After 2–3 days, participants completed 30 minutes of cycling on an ergometer. The researchers found that although bogus feedback was effective for manipulating self-efficacy, there was no differential effect on leg muscle pain intensity ratings in either group. The authors noted these findings should not be generalized to other groups, such as very physically active women and elite athletes.
NIH
Grant Opportunity: New Models of Pain Relevant to the Trigeminal
System (R01)
APS gratefully acknowledges Cephalon, Inc., for its generous support of this product through an educational grant.
Call for Abstracts: 4th Annual Headache Research Summit The National Headache Foundation (NHF) is sponsoring the 4th Annual Headache Research Summit February 13–14, 2007. The Summit will provide a forum for up-and-coming researchers and physicians to present their findings. This program will attract a diverse audience including physicians, midlevel providers, and researchers. The theme for the 2007 Research Summit will be central sensitization (February 13) and clinical application (February 14). The deadline for abstract submissions is November 15. Abstracts must be submitted electronically to csmith@headaches.org. |
Dennis
C. Turk, PhD, Immediate Past President
During
the meeting, Past-President Chris Miaskowski and I shared with those
in attendance the newly approved mission statement of and vision
for APS. We also discussed the strategic plan for the next 3 years
and the status of the “Dream No Small Dreams” Campaign.
To listen to an audio recording of that session, please 
The
2007 APS Call for Symposia and Corporate Satellite Symposia has
been available online since May 31, 2006, at 
The
following highlights summarize selected articles from the May 2006
issue (volume 7, number 5) of The Journal of Pain.
Did
you attend the annual meeting in San Antonio? Did you miss a session
that you would have liked to have attended? APS is pleased to announce
that it will be mailing an MP3 CD-ROM of all annual meeting sessions—over
40 hr of audio content—to those who attended the meeting.
Expect to receive your CD-ROM in late June!