About
Partners4Pain

Our Story

In 2018, a community leader challenged our research team to reflect on what we had done to really get to know community members. What did we know about their lived experiences, especially those who face barriers to accessing healthcare? What had we done to get to know them and hear their perspectives and needs? 

This was a critical turning point for our team, causing us to listen, learn and make a decision to start doing research differently. We decided to put communities in the forefront, which is rare in the pain research field. This led to us working with community partners earlier and more frequently over the entire research process and spending more time out in the community.

In 2022, as a result of this work, Partners4Pain was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through the HEAL initiative, with the goal of starting to tackle pain related disparities. We asked community partners to team up with us. They connected us to community members with pain, who we interviewed to learn about their experiences and what they needed. We then used this information to create new pain programs.

In 2023 we did a pilot study so people with pain could try these new programs, and tell us what they thought of them and how we as researchers could do better. We learned a lot about what was needed to make it easier to take part in research and things we could do to improve the programs.

‍In 2024, based on the pilot study, we received additional NIH funding to evaluate the pain programs on a larger scale in our Twin Cities communities. The study programs began being offered starting in Winter 2025, with ongoing screening for eligibility taking place currently.