Expert roundtable aims to address women’s chronic pain

We introduce you to the women behind a national roundtable on women and chronic pain.

More than 40 experts in pain management gathered in the National Capital Region this week for a first-of-its-kind roundtable to address chronic pain, particularly in women.

Around one in five Canadians deals with chronic pain, but those figures are greater for women.

The roundtable was the result of collaboration between the Chronic Pain Centre of Excellence for Canadian Veterans and the Canadian Pain Society.

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“Women continue to report higher rates of chronic pain, longer waits for diagnosis, and greater difficulty accessing appropriate treatment,” the organizations said in a news release. “For women veterans, these challenges are compounded by the physical and psychological effects of military service and the transition to civilian life. Despite these realities, women’s experiences remain underrepresented in research and inconsistently reflected in clinical practice.”

Dr. Ramesh Zacharais, CEO and medical director of the Chronic Pain Centre of Excellence for Canadian Veterans, spoke to CTV Your Morning Ottawa on Tuesday to discuss the issue, and why women are affected so much.

In 2016 Veterans Affairs Canada did a life after service study, and what they found out … 40 per cent of male veterans have chronic pain, and 50 per cent, sadly, of female veterans have chronic pain,” he said. “What we found out was that, with veteran women, it is much more serious than the general population. So, we started to look at why are the reasons that has happened.”

Zacharais says women are struggling to find access to care for chronic pain.

“We have underfunded the research with women, we have under serviced them, and in fact, sometimes we make them feel guilty that they’re struggling with their pain,” he said. “When it affects eight million women in this country, we need to do something about it. And we brought together researchers, clinicians, funders, policy-makers, to say it’s about time we had a strategy.”

Hélène Le Scelleur, a retired Canadian Armed Forces captain and chair of the Chronic Pain Centre of Excellence for Canadian Veterans, told CTV Your Morning Ottawa said bringing experts together is important to coming up with solutions.

“Bringing all these people together is really key to this because if we’re still working in silos, we’re not achieving a lot, and just the fact that we’re opening the conversation with key people, for example, the Canadian Armed Forces, Veterans Affairs Canada, but also outside of that, researchers that are involved in the veteran world, I guess it’s really important to look at it as a collaborative moment where we can step forward and with real actions,” she said.

When it comes to veterans, specifically, Zacharias said part of the problem is that the veterans’ care system was originally designed with men in mind.

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Le Scelleur said advancing care for veterans can help broader society as well.

“Veterans are part of society, and I think it’s important to mix people from the society with people with lived experience to make sure that we’re going to address the situation entirely,” she said.

Insights from the roundtable will inform a report, to be released in June, outlining strategic priorities and a clear path forward to strengthening research and care for women and women veterans living with chronic pain.