2014 John C. Liebeskind Early Career Scholar Award

Claudia M. Campbell, PhD

Dr. Campbell is a licensed clinical psychologist in the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, where her research focuses on biobehavioral aspects of acute and chronic pain. Her primary research interests and career objectives relate to understanding the mechanisms underpinning the impact of individual differences and psychosocial factors on pain-related outcomes. In particular, she studies individual differences in pain responses and the neurobiological mechanisms by which psychosocial processes shape those individual differences. Her current NIH-funded work focuses on assessment of risk factors for persistent pain and the neurobiologic processes, which link these risk factors to pain-related clinical outcomes. Her current work investigates the behavioral and psychosocial processes that are influential in shaping postoperative outcomes and tests whether endogenous opioid function mediates the association be¬tween psychosocial risk, postoperative pain, and medication usage. Her work also examines the contri¬bution of psychosocial (e.g., depression, cognitive processes, catastrophizing, and sleep disturbance) as their relationship to poor outcomes are increasingly recognized, but poorly understood, particularly with respect to how these factors confer heightened risk for the development and maintenance of per¬sistent pain. In particular, she is interested in the impact of pain-related catastrophizing on neuroendo¬crine and inflammatory responses to pain, as well as individual differences in central nervous system pain processing and their implications for long-term pain-related outcomes. She is involved in several studies that use quantitative sensory testing to assess the psychophysical processes involved in chronic pain states, including osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, sickle cell disease, and temporomandibular joint disorder to further our understanding and management of chronic pain.

The John C. Liebeskind Early Career Scholar Award was named in 1998 to honor the memory of John C. Liebeskind, PhD, a past president of APS who was a noted pain researcher, scientist, and teacher. The Early Career Scholar Award recognizes early career achievements that have made outstanding contributions to pain scholarship.