Advocacy
APS has identified a broad agenda of pain issues and advocates in numerous arenas to improve the care of patients with pain. The Society works to advance the treatment of people in pain by fighting for access to knowledgeable doctors and facilities, removing regulatory barriers, and educating practitioners and policy makers in all settings about evidence-based care and the economics of effective pain treatment.
The APS Strategic Goals include
- establishing pain as a major health problem
- advocating for the prevention or relief of useless pain
- promoting multidisciplinary research to increase knowledge of pain and pain relief mechanisms.
Take Action
Support increased pain research funding
(This is a fillable form. Please save document to your desktop before editing.)
Contact your local member of Congress.
Contacting your elected officials? Use these talking points:
- Trump’s 2018 budget blueprint, includes a $5.8 billion cut to funding for the National Institutes of Health and many people are unaware of just how important this agency is.
- Since 2003, there have been steady decreases to the NIH budget and of that budget, more than 80% of the money goes directly to fund grants.
- NIH can afford to accept only 18% of the grant requests submitted based on the strength and feasibility of the idea, and the importance to the public…a nearly 20 percent cut to the NIH means funding fewer grants.
- NIH research studies, in the areas of pain and other chronic diseases which are increasing healthcare costs and destroying American families and prosperity, drives innovation and protects the public and the economy.
- The limited funding allocated for pain research alone has hampered clinicians’ ability to provide optimal, evidence-based care to individuals suffering from chronic pain. The dramatic increase in the prescription of opioids over the last 2 decades has emerged in the context of limited availability of alternative treatments and insuffcient data regarding the safety and effcacy of long-term opioid therapy for chronic pain
- It has taken decades for pain to be recognized as the serious condition that it is. With the National Pain Strategy out last year and the Federal Pain Research Strategy due out later this year, we are poised to finally make meaningful changes in how pain is treated in this country. Such a huge cut to the NIH budget would be devastating to this momentum.
The Facts and Figures of Funding
Newt Gingrich: Double the N.I.H. Budget – Gingrich, N. (2015, April 22).
FASEB urges Congress to reject the Trump administration budget blueprint – FASEB (2017, March 17).
