A Call to Revolutionize Chronic Pain Care in America | Mayday Fund Special Committee on Pain and the Practice of Medicine

As far back as she can remember, Deana Luchs remembers the pain.

In elementary school her frequent stomach aches and muscle pain were dismissed as imaginary. "I was called a hypochondriac by the doctors and even by family members."

It wasn’t until she was 33 that she got a diagnosis... Read more

Chronic pain — commonly defined as pain persisting longer than six months — affects an estimated 70 million Americans and is a tragically overlooked public health problem.

The burden of chronic pain is greater than that of diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined.

A 1998 National Institutes of Health (NIH) report concluded that just the economic toll of chronic pain may be estimated at $100 billion a year in the United States. It has increased significantly since then.