2017 Jeffrey Lawson Award for Advocacy in Children’s Pain Relief
Carl von Baeyer, PhD
Prof. von Baeyer’s advocacy efforts in reducing children’s pain are local and international. In the Children’s Hospital in his home community of Winnipeg, Canada, he helps to lead an initiative to improve the prevention and relief of pain that has now been adopted as a strategic priority by the department of pediatrics. He is the President of the Special Interest Group on Pain in Childhood, International Association for the Study of Pain, where he has promoted international outreach. He also participates in leadership in ChildKind International, an organization that certifies children’s hospitals where there is a demonstrated commitment to reducing pain via policies, protocols, quality audits, and education programs. He is one of the five founding faculty members of Pain in Child Health, a strategic training initiative of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2002-2017). With over 100 publications on pain, Prof. von Baeyer’s current research is in assessment of children’s pain by self-report. From 2005 to 2014 he developed and edited the first freely available online publication of key pediatric pain issues and its supporting research, Pediatric Pain Letter. Among his previous awards is the Outstanding Pain Mentorship Award of the Canadian Pain Society. His training in clinical psychology was at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (PhD 1978), and at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada, and now holds faculty appointments in clinical health psychology and pediatrics at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. See also www.tinyurl.com/cvb-pubs.
The Jeffrey Lawson Award was established in 1996 in memory of Jeffrey Lawson, whose mother, Jill, brought to the attention of professional organizations the practice of performing surgery and other procedures on children without the benefit of analgesia. The award recognizes advocacy efforts to improve management of pain in children.