Josep Roman-Juan, PhD, is the recipient of the John J. Bonica Trainee Fellowship , which was established in 1998 in memory of the founder of IASP to support training in all aspects of pain research. One Fellowship is given each year for $100,000 which is distributed over the course of two years.
Dr. Roman-Juan will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Manchester, where he will be working with Dr. Anna Hood. Adopting an international, intersectional, transdisciplinary, and anti-oppressive approach that links chronic pain to its early roots in childhood, his research will analyze international datasets that span multiple levels of influence of pediatric chronic pain, including individual self-reported data, objective measures (such as genetic and neuroimaging data), and interpersonal, cultural, and structural factors using innovative machine learning techniques. With the support of the John J. Bonica Trainee Fellowship, Dr. Roman-Juan aims to develop a comprehensive Bio-Psycho-Social- Structural Model that seeks to advance our understanding of chronic pain in youth, moving beyond traditional biomedical models and offering new insights into prevention and intervention strategies.