The activities of the Societal Impact of Pain (SIP) partners at the EFIC Congress started with the meeting of about 25 representatives of the eight SIP national platforms (Spain, Portugal, France, Malta, Belgium, Netherlands, Finland, Ireland).
In this gathering, SIP representatives had the opportunity to share both their experiences and best practices on how to tackle the societal impact of pain at the national level.
Vittoria Carraro, External Relations Director at the European Pain Federation EFIC, said about the platforms work: ‘’Bringing SIP multistakeholder approach at national level gave EFIC chapters an opportunity to strengthen their collaboration with national patient groups and work towards more impactful advocacy projects. EFIC is proud of the strong commitment shown by our national chapters in this project and stand ready to support them further in their work’’.
This meeting was also an opportunity to launch the SIP Toolkit, which will help the work of the newly created national platforms as well the creation of future ones, as well as to prepare the start the National Pain Plan Survey (results planned to be presented at the SIP 2019 Symposium).
The societal impact of pain topics were touched upon in several ways at the EFIC congress focusing, for instance, on:
- the need for political action to change the current paradigm of pain medicine
- the link between pain and employment and the need to prevent work-disability
- the implementation of the WHO 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11)
With regards to the last topic, SIP partners are working to produce concrete policy recommendations on the ICD 11 implementation that will be presented at the SIP 2019 Symposium and delivered to the upcoming German Presidency of the European Council (July-December 2020).
You can find out more about the latest SIP activities at the EFIC Congress and beyond on the SIP newsletter.
