Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care  (PaPaS)  group addresses the gap in knowledge on chronic  pain in childhood and helps push solutions forward.

On July 12th at the Wellcome Trust in London, UK,  world-leading experts came together to look at evidence, policy and practice in the area of childhood pain.

Clinicians, researchers, funders and policy makers from charities, universities and hospitals discussed the lack of knowledge in this area and shared their collective ambition to increase the quality of evidence in this field.

Professor Christopher Eccleston, Coordinating Editor of the Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive (PaPaS)  Review Group, who initiated the event explained, “Four years ago the Cochrane PaPaS Group promised a programme of systematic reviews on the evidence for interventions for adults with chronic pain (both neuropathic and cancer related) and children with chronic pain. The work was supported by the NIHR. We produced 49 systematic reviews in a three year period, 10 of which for children and adolescents with chronic pain. The principal finding from these ten reviews was a distinct lack of evidence,  with too few trials in this area. The lack of research in this important field is so striking that we wanted to gather a group of influencers together fast  to address this gap in knowledge and think creatively about what the solutions could be.”

Presentations were shared on pain in babies, pharmalogical treatments in chronic pain, pharmalogical treatments for disease related pain and psychological treatments for chronic pain followed by discussions which highlighted the lack of large, high quality trials in this area.

Discussion ranged from concerns about how pain is identified in children to the impact social media is having on expectations and the opportunity smart phones offer to collect data differently.

The initiative led by the Cochrane PaPaS Group was funded by NIHR and backed by partners including the European Pain Federation, Wellcome Trust, and Arthritis Research UK. 

Co-organiser Systematic reviewer and editorial assistant Dr Emma Fisher from the PaPaS Group, explained, “All the attendees are working in some way to mitigate the lack of data in this field, for some it is a daily challenge - treating young patients, knowing they can’t help them as much as they would like. This is a springboard and just the beginning. As an academic collective we will focus on taking our recommendations forward.” 

• Cochrane is in the process of developing new online training and resources to help all Cochrane contributors and Groups learn more and provide practical help in facilitating and promoting the update of evidence in their work.
• If you have examples of your Knowledge Translation work that you would like to share, please contact support@cochrane.org