Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

One of the most commonly reported outcomes across disease conditions, including musculoskeletal disorders, is pain. However, lack of standardization of pain outcome measurements among clinical trials makes it difficult to provide a comprehensive synthesis of the evidence of treatments for musculoskeletal disorders. There is no explicit process for deciding which outcomes, which instruments, and which effect size metric should be reported in systematic reviews. Systematic reviews are high-level overviews of primary research that are internationally recognized as the highest standard in evidence-based health care. The purpose of this application is to provide guidance to select and report pain outcomes in the Cochrane Summary of Findings (SoF) Table, that are found in Cochrane Reviews. Cochrane Reviews are considered the gold standard of systematic reviews. We aim to hold a one-day meeting to bring patients, health care practitioners and methodologists together to (1) address the inconsistency in the use of the most important patient- and policy-relevant pain outcomes in SoF Tables of chronic painful conditions, and (2) to move forward with a collaborative and standardized approach in the use and presentation of these outcomes. This meeting would advance wider international work to create consensus and standardization in aspects of pain, actively creates partnerships, and puts more of a focus on patient-important outcomes such as pain.