Taking Community Action Against Pain Disparities: Setting a Community-Informed Research Agenda

Pain and pain treatment disparities among older people are significant public health issues; older minority (i.e., Hispanic/Latino, African American) populations report higher pain severity scores and pain-associated physical and psychological disability, while they are less likely to receive any analgesic medications and opioids, have longer wait times for medications, and participate less in evidence-based non-pharmacological programs to manage pain. We describe an ongoing community-academic research partnership to develop a research, intervention, and policy agenda for improving the management of chronic pain among older minority New York City residents. Applying the CITRA Research-to-Practice Consensus Conference model (Sabir et al., 2006, The Gerontologist) we engaged both practitioners and researchers in a series of workshops and other activities to identify research priorities for developing evidence-based community programs that take into account existing research on pain disparities. Participants in this process included community leaders, front-line staff in agencies serving older people, researchers, policy makers, private funders and other stakeholder groups. Activities included translation of research on pain disparities into a nontechnical report, a face-to-face conference to engage practitioners and researchers in revising this report and craft research recommendations, and follow-up meetings between practitioners and researchers to refine the report for community distribution and to involve practitioners in the process of designing and implementing research in community settings. Insights that emerged from these activities included the importance of focusing on gender disparities in pain among minority groups, cultural representations of pain, and health literacy among older people to design effective interventions to reduce pain disparities.