The NIH’s National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, together with the NIH Pain Consortium, will sponsor a workshop on Chronic Overlapping Pain Conditions. The workshop will be held Monday and Tuesday, August 13 and 14, 2012 in the Natcher Conference Center, Building 45 on the NIH Campus in Bethesda, Maryland.

Chronic overlapping pain conditions represent a complex set of painful disorders that occur frequently in the population, lack a mechanistic understanding, and are in need of hypothesis-driven research efforts. This workshop will bring together researchers with expertise in various pain conditions and other expertise to discuss these conditions and to develop a forward-thinking research agenda. The workshop will focus on our current understanding of chronic overlapping pain conditions, their etiology, risk factors, mechanisms of disease, outcome measures, and diagnosis. It will be a two-day meeting with short presentations by panelists and extensive discussion periods. The workshop will be co-chaired by Daniel Clauw from the University of Michigan and Elizabeth Unger from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The goal of the workshop is to develop a coordinated research strategy that addresses underlying etiology; the trajectory of disease; risk factors for onset, progression and reversal; and approaches for developing outcome measures and diagnosis of these conditions.

The meeting is open to the research community and free registration will occur on Monday morning at the door beginning at 8:00 am. The workshop will start at 8:30 am. The meeting agenda is available here.

For further information contact: John Kusiak at kusiakj@mail.nih.gov or at 301-594-7984.

A Workshop on Chronic Overlapping Pain Conditions