Campaign is Urgently Needed To Fight Epidemic of Unnecessary Suffering, Says Stanford Dean

Recent research has revealed that the amount of needless suffering caused by both acute and chronic pain in the United States is a major, overlooked medical problem.

The considered opinion is that this requires improved education at multiple levels, stretching from the implementation of new public health campaigns to better training of primary care physicians in pain management.

Philip Pizzo, MD, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine,chaired a committee that issued an Institute of Medicine report in June which found that more than 116 million Americans have pain that persists for weeks to years with associated financial costs to the country ranging from $560 billion to $635 billion per year.