SCHOFIELD BARRACKS, Hawaii (03 Oct, 2017) --- Chronic pain and opioid over-prescribing are major issues within the Army. 45% of Soldiers and 50% of veterans suffer from pain on a regular basis. One of the issues is that prescription opioids are really not that effective for managing chronic non-cancer pain, but are often used at the tip of the spear for pain management. A movement to decrease opioid prescriptions and find a more holistic and effective approach to treating pain has been initiated.
COL Deydre Teyhen, the Commander of U.S Army Health Clinic-Schofield Barracks is a member of one of the 12 teams that will be ultimately granted a total of $81 million in research grant funding to help advance the science of pain management. The team COL Teyhen is part of is led by Julie Fritz, PhD, from the University of Utah and MAJ Dan Rhon from Army Medicine. They received $6.5 million dollars to complete a 6-year study related to low back pain. The grant is funded by an interagency partnership between National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Clinical Rehabilitation Medicine Research Program from U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and Department of Defense, as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs called the NIH-DoD-VA Pain Management Collaboratory.
Dr. Fritz and team plan to study a stepped care management approach to improve how we care for those with low back pain over the next six years. The project will take patients with low back pain and randomly assign them to either receive physical therapy, or the holistic 'Move to Health' intervention. The care will last six weeks before being evaluated to determine if there needs to be an additional 'step' in their care to prevent them from developing chronic pain. "We are trying to take a really holistic approach. We will start with patient education, sleep management, exercise and stress reduction," said the lead researcher from the University of Utah Julie Fritz, PhD. "For those who don't respond right away, we may move into mindfulness, acupuncture and other non-pharmacological treatments."
Move to Health is a holistic approach to health care that incorporates eight pillars of overall health; activity, nutrition, family/social, spiritual, emotional, surroundings, sleep, and personal development. "By incorporating all eight pillars into our system for health, we are able to look at every approach of the cause of pain and find the best way to treat our patients", stated Col Deydre Teyhen, Commander of the U.S. Army Health Clinic at Schofield Barracks (USAHC-SB). "By using Move to Health we are able to identify additional areas that may either contribute or prevent the recovery from pain that typically has not been blatantly visible".
The stepped care management research study stems from a long standing issue of chronic pain within the military. Traditionally treated with pharmacologically-heavy approaches, which have limited efficacy and dangerous long term effects, the system for health is looking for more effective treatments while limiting the amount of opioid prescriptions. "We have to remember that pain never starts off being chronic", stated MAJ Dan Rhon. "Something happens along the way, and suddenly we have this extremely debilitating condition. We owe our warfighters that are giving everything some better answers."
Social Sharing