Creating the world’s first national pain strategy in Australia

The Bupa Health Foundation funded Prof Michael Cousins of the Pain Management Research Institute to develop Australia's first national pain strategy to inform effective policy development on the prevention and management of chronic pain, and raise awareness of chronic pain's significant personal and economic burden.

The result was a landmark report, published by the Foundation entitled "The High Price of Pain". This report first identified the need for a national pain strategy to inform health policy.

The National Pain Summit
The Foundation, alongside the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, Faculty of Pain Medicine, the Australian Pain Society and Chronic Pain Australia and the Pain Management Research Institute, then brought together some of Australia's leading pain experts and consumer groups in August 2009.

At the inaugural National Pain Summit, attendees discussed a draft national pain strategy, the result of thousands of hours' work by more than 70 pain medicine specialists, other health professionals and consumers. This discussion led to the world's first national pain strategy, which was then issued for consultation.

The ground-breaking draft strategy included the following calls:

• That chronic pain should be recognised as a disease in its own right;
• That pain should be given a diagnostic code along with other chronic diseases to document its prevalence, outcomes and costs;
• When monitoring patients, pain should be included as the fifth vital sign (with blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and breathing rate); and
• That more effort should be made to de-stigmatise pain (similar to the successful campaigns to de-stigmatise depression).

Following the conference, the draft strategy was consulted on extensively by patient groups and other professionals, whose comments were consolidated and inputted into the finalised document that was formally adopted in March 2010 at a subsequent "Pain Summit".