A few months ago, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a National Pain Strategy. This strategy provides guidance on developing ways to measure pain and its management, improving care surrounding pain, and increasing public awareness of pain in order to destigmatize it.

As pain patients, we know that pain affects much of our lives as well – something that others aren’t necessarily always in tune with. This strategy would help to recognize and promote that to those currently not in the know.

This would also help to lower the people who are on opiates unnecessarily and help them to gain access to other pain management fitting their pain. It is, after all, a part of the initiative to lower opiate abuse.

The National Pain Strategy is a first-of-its-kind blueprint for improving chronic pain care in America, that increases research of pain treatments, medical training for clinicians, and awareness of chronic pain as a disease of epidemic proportions. Without an outcry from patients and advocates, NPS may not be implemented or funded at all. The chronic pain epidemic must be addressed immediately by fully implementing and funding the NPS.

The National Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain Association, along with The Consumer Pain Advocacy Task Force, have combined forces to create a petition on the White House petition site in order to ask for this to pass.

We need 100,000 signatures by August 12. As of this morning, that means we need just shy of 92,000 signatures in ten days.

I know we can do this if we all sign and share.

What can you do to help?

• Sign the petition here and make sure to share on social media (bonus points for using tags like #ISpeakForPain!)
• Write a blog post or record a video about it and share that!
• Use the photo I’ve created below to share on Insta

Ensuring that this passes will make the world better and less painful for us. Let’s do what we can to make it so.