The Science and Practice of Pain Medicine: A Needed Meeting of Our Minds and Skills

The American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) and members of the pain community have a good reason for optimism in 2009. Important developments are occurring simultaneously on many fronts. The success of our annual meeting this year reflects a satisfying confluence of excitement about our rapidly developing translational science and hope about our growing evidence-based practices. We—our specialty, our patients, and our science—are on a roll, and there is much to be accomplished to maintain our momentum.Advances in public understanding of the societal burden of chronic pain and appreciation for the issues affecting pain treatment progressively galvanize public support for better treatment. Resulting legislation will lead to policy changes that ultimately will improve the training of providers and the care of patients. Congressional pain bills recently signed into law are now being implemented in the Veterans Health Administration and the Department of Defense. We anticipate that a strong cooperative effort with our Pain Care Coalition (PCC) partners and organizations, such as the American Pain Foundation, the Pain Care Forum, and the American Cancer Society, will lead to passage of HR 756 in Congress (see below) and increased National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for pain research and education. The AAPM continues its collaboration with other professional organizations such as the International Spine Intervention Society (ISIS), the North American Spine Society (NASS), and the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) to improve understanding of the value of pain treatments and reimbursements for our treatments. There is growing recognition within and outside medicine that, for our society as a whole, responsibility for improved pain care, presently an orphan of several specialties whose primary interests lie elsewhere, will improve significantly only with the advent and development of pain medicine as a distinct specialty, unencumbered by its parent specialties' primary interests and attention to …