#RiseUp Blog

Check out this blog regularly for new posts about current events and the pain community’s eAdvocacy efforts. Plus, check out tips on utilizing collaborative tools to amplify the pain community’s message!

This blog will focus on comparing, contrasting, and researching current issues impacting the pain community, and we will collaborate to support community calls for action.

This blog is designed to be patient-centric, providing the pain community a unified voice addressing current issues impacting the pain community, and tackling these issues cohesively and amplifying our message.

This blog is created “by patients, for patients” with an emphasis on acute, chronic and intractable pain related healthcare topics including:

• raising public awareness about the complexity of acute and intractable pain and the need to preserve patient options for treatment
• rolling back the CDC guidelines, and other healthcare policy that is having a negative impact on the pain community
• challenging healthcare bias and stigma of pain patients including labeling legitimate pain patients with inappropriate diagnosis intended for addicts, such as Opiate Use Disorder (O.U.D.)
• highlighting the lethal nature of untreated pain and it’s consequences, including the risk of suicide and the impact of prohibition on safety
• preserving patient rights to include timely diagnosis and access to effective treatment modalities
• challenging the mainstream media’s narrow narrative about pain patients and pain treatment further fueling stigma
• questioning current research being utilized as a reliable data for restricting patient treatment options
• protecting pain management physicians from drug enforcement over-reach
• protecting the patient-physician-pharmacist relationship
• providing ongoing future protections to patients and pain management physicians
• contacting policy makers to end ‘opioid hysteria, opioid bias and healthcare bias” impacting patient’s access to care
• addressing the influx of illicit drugs entering the United States, as the culprit for unintended overdoses, not prescription opioids that are prescribed by medical professionals for legitimate patients
• discouraging drug enforcement, oversight agencies, special interests and third-party administrators from practicing medicine or curtailing licensed physicians from practicing medicine
• examining the profit driven motives behind the “opioid crisis” driving opioid hysteria
• encouraging patients to be empowered and take direct action when appropriate and possible through the use of collaborative tools and social media strategy

We will also demonstrate the cost of lost productivity to our nation, and the burden of increased healthcare costs when pain is left untreated.

We will discuss the increased reliance on state/federal assistance when patient’s have catastrophic outcomes or complications from unacknowledged and under-treated pain.

We will offer access to articles, studies and information to empower individuals in the pain community to take action in light of recent healthcare policy changes, and the projected changes across the US that are expected to sweep the nation in 2019.

We will seek to amplify our unified message until we are heard.

We hope you will find useful information that will bring unity to the pain community to act cohesively, effectively and add value to the national/ state/ local conversation about preserving patient choice and individualized patient care.

We hope our contributions will assist the pain community to collaborate to protect access to effective, cost effective treatment for pain, and we look forward to hearing from all of you on different topics that you would like to see us address.

Thanks for leaving a comment and for supporting the Pain Advocacy Coalition #RiseUp blog.

What other topics would you like to see addressed on this blog?