The Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (IPRCC) held its inaugural meeting on March 27, 2012 to discuss pain research. ASA and the Pain Care Coalition advocated for creation of the IPRCC, which was formed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) as a federal advisory committee to enhance pain research and promote collaboration across the federal government. The IPRCC will summarize advances in pain research supported or conducted by federal agencies and identify gaps in pain research. The IPRCC will also make recommendations to ensure that federal agencies are not duplicating efforts, how to disseminate information on pain care, and how to expand public-private partnerships that focus on pain research.

Story Landis, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and chair of the IPRCC and Pain Consortium, explained that NIH designated NINDS to be the lead institute at NIH for pain efforts and announced that NINDS will establish an office to support the IPRCC and Pain Consortium.  The designation of a lead institute for pain research was a key recommendation of the Institute of Medicine report on pain. 

The IPRCC includes seven federal members and twelve non-federal members drawn from the scientific and medical communities and organizations that represent individuals with pain-related conditions.  ASA is pleased that Sean Mackey, M.D., chief of the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Division of Pain Management and a member of the ASA Pain Medicine Committee, serves on the IPRCC, though Dr. Mackey does not represent ASA on the IPRCC. Other IPRCC members with a background in anesthesia include Bob A. Rappaport, M.D., director of the Division of Anesthesia, Analgesia, and Addiction Products in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Carmen R. Green, M.D., professor of anesthesiology, obstetrics and gynecology, and health management and policy at the University of Michigan’s schools of Medicine and Public Health, Ann Arbor. The full committee roster is available here.

The next in-person meeting of the IPRCC will likely be in September 2012.

Learn more about ASA’s advocacy in Pain Medicine.