Date: Thursday, April 27, 2023, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., Eastern (US) Time
Attendance is free for IASP members, though registration is still required. A registration fee of $25 is required for non-IASP members. To become an IASP member, you can join here. Trainee memberships are $50 per year, while regular memberships are $180 or $230 per year, depending on income level.
This webinar is being produced by the International Association for the Study of Pain’s Social Aspects of Pain Special Interest Group (SocSIG).
This webinar will examine demographic and sociological aspects of chronic pain – with a special focus on pain trends and disparities in the US and worldwide – and on the role of upstream macro-level factors in shaping these pain outcomes. The presenters will:
1. review the role of chronic pain as a holistic measure of population health – focusing on its strong links to both physical and mental aspects of health – to help understand the sometimes paradoxical findings about pain at the population level;
2. present recent findings on sociodemographic inequalities in pain and their potential drivers, with a focus on less commonly studied social groups (e.g., sexual minorities, multiracial individuals, etc.); and
3. use evidence from comparative studies to highlight the importance of “upstream” factors – in particular national and subnational contexts – in understanding pain trends and disparities.
There will be a live Q&A session following these presentations.
Participants include:
- Anna Zajacova, PhD, University of Western Ontario, Canada
- Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk, PhD, University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA
- Adam Hirsh, PhD, Indiana University, USA (moderator)
Learning objectives:
- Conceptualizing pain as a holistic measure of population health.
- Understanding the role of upstream macro-level factors – in particular national and subnational level contexts – and their role in population pain patterns.
- Appreciating how these two aspects of pain, and its causes, help explain social patterning of pain over time and across population groups – including among racial/ethnic minorities and sexual minorities.
About the presenters
Anna Zajacova, PhD, is a social demographer and sociologist who specializes in the study of population health. Her research focuses on chronic pain, where she examines trends and disparities, as well as social causes and consequences of pain. She has received funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Zajacova holds a PhD in sociology and demography from Princeton University, New Jersey, USA, and she also completed postdoctoral training at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and the University of Michigan, USA. Currently, she is professor and graduate chair in sociology at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk, PhD, is a medical sociologist and demographer. Her research seeks to understand chronic pain at the population level – including its social, temporal, and geographic distribution – and its social causes and consequences. She is principal investigator on a National Institute on Aging-funded project, “The Demography of Chronic Pain: A Population Approach to Pain Trends, Pain Disparities, and Pain-Related Disability and Death” (R01 AG065351; 2020-2025). She achieved her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and is an associate professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA
About the moderator
Adam Hirsh, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis, USA, where he directs the Pain Research Laboratory. His team conducts research on the biopsychosocial aspects of pain and functioning in humans. They use clinical and laboratory-based methods to study providers of pain care, patients who experience pain, and healthy laypersons. Hirsh achieved his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Florida, USA, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in rehabilitation research at the University of Washington School of Medicine, USA.