Our Mission
Chronic pain is a common problem in children, with negative consequences to the individual, the family and society. Moreover, recent research has shown that chronic pain prevalence is increasing in children across many countries, including those in Europe. Despite the high (and growing) prevalence of chronic pain in children, it continues to be largely unrecognized, understudied, and undertreated.
Treatment options for children with chronic pain remain limited, due in large part by: (1) the lack of sophistication in the patient-report outcome measures (PROMS) used for assessing key outcomes, which hinders comparison of results from trials, clinical practice and registries, and formulation of evidence-based recommendations; (2) a limited understanding of the factors that influence chronic pain and its impact; and (3) the very limited access to chronic pain specialized care for children.
In August 2022, the ERA-NET NEURON (a funding platform supported by 35 research funding organizations and ministries from 28 countries, focused on neurological and mental disorders; https://www.neuron-eranet.eu/) issued a call for networking groups on chronic pain. We submitted a proposal to support the development of an international interdisciplinary and collaborative network focused on chronic pain in childhood: the International Network on Chronic Pain in Childhood (or IN-ChildPain), which was awarded in April, 2023.
In-ChildPain aims to identify crtical knowledge gaps, develop recommendations to address the gaps identified, and provide guidelines to support future research about chronic pain in children and adolescents.
This network includes 24 individuals, mostly from Europe (Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom), but also from Australia, Canada, and the United States of America. Participants in the network include a multidisciplinary group of clinicians and researchers, in addition to children with chronic pain, industry, and European-based Pain Federation representatives.
By identifying knowledge gaps in the areas of chronic pain assessment and treatment, the IN-ChildPain network will be able to provide specific recommendations for the assessment of children and adolescents with chronic pain in both clinical and research settings. In addition, these recommendations will help to improve the overall rigor of research in this area, the ability to synthesize research findings from around the world, and identify children at risk of chronification using the best measures.
As first steps, the project will study (1) how healthcare professionals address outcome assessment in their in- and outpatient programs for the management of chronic pain in children, and (2) the barriers and facilitators of pediatric CP registries in the existing pain clinics/management programs. The initial findings from these efforts will help to inform the development of a guide for an international registry of children with chronic pain and develop a research protocol to study the availability of, and access to, different treatments, to help evaluate their effects as naturally provided to patients.
The results of the projects conducted by the network will lead to improvements in our scientific understanding of the nature, scope, and treatment of chronic pain in children. This will help to inform the development of more effective treatments, which will then contribute to a decrease in the suffering and costs associated with chronic pain in this population.