Managing chronic pain is very important since unrelieved pain can have negative effects on the immune, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and renal systems. It also can lead to anxiety disorders, including panic, generalized anxiety, and PTSD.
There are a number of barriers to effective pain care. Health professionals in some cases may hold negative attitudes toward people reporting pain and may regard pain as not worth serious attention. Secondly, the profession and culture of medicine generally focuses on biological rather than psychosocial causes and effects of illnesses.
Third, clinicians may not ask about or thoroughly investigate pain, and fourth while evidence-based protocols and guidelines exist to assist primary care professionals in treating people with chronic pain, these protocols are used only rarely to treat pain in primary care practices. Finally, while interdisciplinary and interprofessional team approaches can facilitate high quality pain care, a team approach is not consistently used in pain care.
A Request for Proposal (RFP) issued July 28, 2014 by the Independent Grants for Learning & Change (IGLC) program is interested in engaging interdisciplinary and interprofessional teams in the care and management of chronic pain patients.
The strategy is to focus on interprofessional education to enable participants to learn both individually and as collaborative members of a team with the common goal to improve patient outcomes in managing chronic pain.
Grant funding is available for $2 million but budgets should not exceed $350,000. Pfizer the funder and sponsor of the RFP is working with a Consortium comprised of the California Academy of Family Physicians, Healthcare Performance Consulting, Inc., Interstate Postgraduate Medical Association, and Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation.
The RFP supports initiatives and demonstration projects related to all types of chronic pain in adults, adolescents, and children that would improve or advance the standard of care for chronic pain patients and then test the implementation of the improved care.
Grant applicants can include but are not limited to primary care professional associations, academic medical centers, healthcare systems, or other interprofessional organizations. Grantees that are selected will receive funding for their project and will be required to participate in a facilitated collaborative experience.
The deadline for the Letter of Intent is August 25, 2014, September 15, 2014 is the deadline to request the full grant proposal, and October 20, 2014 is the deadline for the full grant proposal.
For questions regarding the RFP, please contact Robert Kristofco at Robert.kristofco@pfizer.com with the subject line, “Engaging Interdisciplinary and Interprofessional Teams in the Care and Management of Chronic Pain Patients.”
Go www.pfizer.com/responsibility/grants_contributions/request_proposals to view the proposal information. For details on the “Independent Grants for Learning & Change” program, go to www.pfizer.com/independentgrants.