Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain LIFE Spring 2015, Issue 11 | Page 23

Advocacy Update

• integrated to encourage population-focused research, education,
communication, and communitywide approaches that can help
reduce pain and its consequences
and remediate disparities in the
experience of pain among subgroups of Americans.
• Include an agenda for developing
physiological, clinical, behavioral, and psychological outcomes,
and health services research and
appropriate links across these
domains.
• Improve pain assessment and
management programs within the
service delivery and financing programs of the federal government.
• Proceed in cooperation with the
Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee and the National
Institutes of Health’s Pain Consortium and reach out to privatesector participants as appropriate.
• Involve the appropriate agencies

and entities.
• Include ongoing efforts to enhance public awareness about the
nature of chronic pain and the role
of self-care in its management.
Under the auspices of the IPRCC,
the National Pain Strategy Task
Force Working Groups were organized to create the National Pain
Strategy (NPS).
Seven working
groups (comprised of 80 experts
across America) then developed
the comprehensive NPS. NPS Task
Force members include patient advocates: Jan Chambers, President of
National Fibromyalgia & Chronic
Pain Association; Lee Claassen,
Executive Director of Interstitial
Cystitis Association; Penney Cowan, President of American Chronic
Pain Association; Terrie Cowley,
President of TMJ Association;
Cindy Steinberg, Policy Director for
U.S. Pain Foundation; and Christin

Veasley, Co-founder of the Chronic
Pain Research Alliance.
The National Pain Strategy developed
by the National Pain Strategy Task
Force has been under review by HHS
for several months and will soon be
released for a 30-day public comment
period. People with chronic pain,
their families, friends, healthcare
providers, and all stakeholders are
urged to respond to the recommendation and actions generated by the
National Pain Strategy Task Force.
Your voice matters, and it is important that you respond to the public
comment period so that people affected by chronic pain will be heard.
Watch for more information about
the National Pain Strategy and
how you can help to ensure recognition of important issues faced
everyday by people with FM and
chronic pain.

The National Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain Association joined the
newly formed Consumer Pain Advocacy Task Force (CPATF)
In March 2014, 16 organizations formed the
CPATF to unite around one goal – to work collectively to promote, support and monitor the
implementation of the National Pain Strategy
(NPS). Learn more about the NPS and how
you can be involved please go to http://consumerpainadvocacy.org/. The National Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain Association will keep
you informed along the way and ask for your
involvement at critical moments.
Stay tuned and be ready to take action. We expect
the NPS Report to be released for an open public
comment period soon and will send you an action
alert at the right time so you can join thousands of
others living with pain to speak out in response.

• Chronic pain is a