Recognising, understanding, and addressing health inequities is fundamental to reducing the global burden of persistent pain. The “Identifying Social Factors that Stratify Health Opportunities and Outcomes (ISSHOOs) in Pain Research” project has developed a minimum dataset of equity-relevant items, recommended for inclusion in all human adult pain research.
The consensus-derived ISSHOOs recommendations, published in Lancet eClinicalMedicine (Karran et al., 2025), provide a globally relevant and adaptable tool to guide the standardised collection of sociodemographic data, a crucial step towards advancing equity considerations in pain research.
ISSHOOs ‘Set A’ (the 8-item minimum dataset) and ‘Set B’ (a 30-item optional dataset) are available as downloadable files for REDCap and Qualtrics, along with translations, project details, and links to publications, at www.isshoos.org.