Opportunity Area 3: Expanding Public Awareness

Changing attitudes about and behavior toward women who endure chronic pain starts by expanding awareness.  Due to the lack of understanding associated with their conditions, up to 50 million American women with these six chronic pain conditions often suffer in silence because they are told that they are imagining or overstating their pain.  There is a tremendous need to educate the public about these chronic pain conditions and their negative impact on women, their families, our society, and the economy, as well as the need for increased federal funding of research on these conditions.  

As such the federal government should support a multi-year campaign that will: 

• Educate the public about the seriousness and societal costs of these conditions;
• Make available and promote sources of reliable information on the symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and overlapping nature of the conditions; and
• Provide information to women with chronic pain about how to effectively communicate with their health professionals about these conditions.

Section 4308 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the major health care reform legislation signed into law by the President in March, requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to “establish and implement a national pain care education outreach and awareness campaign.”  Funding for this initiative should be conditioned on the inclusion of women’s chronic pain conditions as outlined above.  Equity demands no less. 

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