Wishing you peace, love and light from the AACIPM family to yours…

Spotlight: CDC’s Chad Helmick Speaks on the Past (and Future) of Pain Policy upon Eve of Retirement

After an illustrious 42-year career, including 240 publications and unparalleled advocacy in pain management, Charles (Chad) G. Helmick III, MD (CAPT, USPHS, RET) is officially retiring from CDC on December 31. It is with bittersweet hearts that we at AACIPM announce his retirement as Senior Medical Officer for the Division of Population Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A friend and ally to those in the pain management community for many decades, Dr. Helmick implemented arthritis and lupus programs at CDC, helped to craft the National Pain Strategy, and participated in the multi-stakeholder collaborative work of the Alliance to Advance Comprehensive Integrative Pain Management.As a champion of encouraging interest in a public health approach to chronic pain, Dr. Helmick will be sorely missed, so we asked him a few questions about his time working with the CDC and what he envisions for the future of pain management policy.

We wish Dr. Helmick all the best in his retirement and look forward to more collaboration into the future!

Read Our Interview

National Updates

ICYMI: Recent Releases from CMS, FDA, VA, NIA, and AANA

While federal agencies and national organizations have been moving a bit more slowly during December, the month of November brought with it a new Physician Fee Schedule from CMS, FDA authorization of a virtual reality system for chronic pain, mindfulness resources from the VA, a consumer guide on pain from the National Institute on Aging, and updated chronic pain management guidelines from the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology.

Recent Releases

Funding Opportunities

NIH Pain Consortium Webinar on Preparing Grant Applications on January 13

The Grant Mechanism Webinar Series from the NIH Pain Consortium will present its next webinar on January 13, 2022 from 3:00-4:00pm ET. This webinar will focus on preparing the application and submitting the grant. Registration for this webinar is required, but free.

Current HEAL Initiative Funding Opportunities related to:

Advancing Health Equity & Pain Comorbidities
Joint Health and Function
Data and Methods to Stem the Opioid Epidemic
Biomarkers & Myofascial Pain
Preventing Opioid Misuse & Social Determinants

Advancing Health Equity in Pain and Comorbidities has been published as a Notice of Intent by the HEAL Initiative, with an estimated application due date of April 1, 2022. This funding opportunity seeks to identify effective evidence-based interventions that improve multidisciplinary pain care and target common comorbidities for populations that experience health disparities.

Restoring Joint Health and Function to Reduce Pain (RE-JOIN) has been published as a Notice of Intent by the HEAL Initiative, with an estimated application due date of April 29, 2022. This Notice encourages applications from investigators with expertise on joint components and structures, function, neurobiology and computer modeling.

Data and Methods to Address Urgent Needs to Stem the Opioid Epidemic and a corresponding funding opportunity related to Exploratory Data and Methods are accepting applications through March 10, 2022. These opportunities seek to develop new methods, approaches, and tools to apply to existing data streams (e.g., electronic health records, claims data, pharmacy dispensing, etc.) that could provide novel insights into the dynamics of opioid and prescription drugs misuse, addiction, recovery, relapse, and recovery.

Developing Quantitative Imaging and Other Relevant Biomarkers of Myofascial Tissues for Clinical Pain Management is accepting Letters of Intent until January 11, 2022, with full applications due February 12, 2022. This funding opportunity seeks research applications to develop quantitative imaging biomarkers of myofascial tissues and assess their abilities to monitor responses and/or predict outcomes of a variety of pain management regimens. If you are interested in applying, be sure to register for the virtual researchers’ networking session to be held on January 6, 2022 from 3 to 4 p.m. ET.

Preventing Opioid Misuse and Co-Occurring Conditions by Intervening on Social Determinants is accepting Letters of Intent until February 2, 2022, with full applications due March 2, 2022. This funding opportunity aims to build an evidence base for multi-level interventions that target malleable factors and conditions affecting the social context. Applications must seek to reduce health inequities in a U.S. population or population subgroup affected by the opioid crisis by studying the effects of a theory driven, multi-level intervention on the prevention of opioid misuse/opioid use disorder and co-occurring conditions.

NIH Funding Opportunities

Message from the Director

As we enter a new year, I look forward to accomplishing more important and collaborative work with many different groups and stakeholders. The coming months will include more activities that will expand upon our shared interests and goals. Our next newsletter will include a great end-of-year review that highlights the good work accomplished in 2021 with so many of you.