Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grants - Institute/Initiative Community Support

Chronic pain affects one in five Canadians. It has a major impact on people's lives. It affects their ability to work, enjoy daily activities, and maintain good mental health. Although chronic pain is common, many health workers do not have enough training on how to support people living with pain. This gap often leads to delays in care, misunderstanding, and even stigma for people who are already struggling. To address this, we are bringing together a diverse group of experts for a one-day planning meeting at the University of Victoria. Participants include health workers, educators, researchers, and people with lived experience of pain. We will also have representatives from organizations such as Pain BC and the Provincial Health Services Authority. Our goal is to design a practical approach to pain education. The meeting will help us plan better training for health workers across different settings and professions. Working together, we will identify educational resources that already exist. Take note of what's missing and what gets in the way of better pain education for health workers. We will also ensure that education is useful, respectful, and easy to apply in healthcare settings. The ideas we come up with will help us build a plan for a larger project that tests new ways of teaching and learning. This plan will follow a Learning Health System approach, which means using feedback from real-world care to keep improving how pain education is delivered over time. In sum, this project aims to improve how health workers learn about and respond to chronic pain. This will ensure that care is more informed, compassionate, and effective. Working together, we can take the first step toward building a better system of support for people living with pain.