Open the way for opioid-free pain reduction

For men of all ages who are managing the daily battle with pain, the effects are personal, emotional, and often can’t be quantified beyond their own experience. Chronic pain can pull you away from the most routine tasks. It limits a person’s ability to physically function and can inhibit their ability to manage a steady career. For parents with chronic pain, raising a child can become more difficult. All of this can lead to feelings of anxiety, isolation, and even suicide.

For men, the battle with chronic pain can be worsened because of a reluctance to seek out help and treatment. Most men are taught from a young age to cope quietly with pain instead of telling others.

For those who do seek out treatment, their options are limited. Opioids have often been the first line of defense to help patients manage pain, leaving millions of Americans feeling misrepresented and forgotten in efforts to address our nation’s opioid epidemic.

As advocates for men’s health, we recognize we need to change the way we treat pain. More research is needed to identify innovative treatments for chronic pain. We need to expand access to affordable, non-opioid medications for patients. And most importantly, we need to give patients a voice.

The Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force, overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense, brings hope to the men we serve every day that this is possible. The task force represents a diverse set of individuals across the healthcare system who were brought together to propose recommendations that address the gaps in care for those managing chronic pain. In 2018, the task force released a Draft Report on Pain Management Best Practices that recognized the barriers that exist for chronic pain patients, the need for more personalized care, and the need for increased access to alternative treatments. This May, after gathering input from thousands of stakeholders, the task force voted to pass its final draft report.

The task force calls for non-opioid medications to be used as first-line therapy whenever possible and recommends that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other payors align reimbursement guidelines for these medications with current clinical practice guidelines and the time and resources it takes to educate patients about these new therapies. It will be up to that federal agency to implement new reimbursement policies that support these recommendations, to provide incentives for innovation that allow these new medications to come to market swiftly. It will be up to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in part, to uphold revised guidelines that support the use of non-opioid medications as a first-line therapy.

Some may be hesitant to support policies such as this because there is uncertainty that new medications will be as effective as opioids, but the coordinated response to the opioid epidemic has left too many who are managing pain without anywhere else to turn. That is exactly why we need policies that help to bring new options to market in a way that works for patients and the healthcare system. Non-opioid medications could help millions of Americans better treat and manage their chronic pain symptoms, but only if we support policies that expand access to these innovative medicines in a safe and expedited way.

Our priority is to advocate for policies that ensure men have the medications they need to manage their pain, that those medications are safe, and that they are affordable. We believe more research will move us closer to putting more effective medicines in the hands of patients who need them. This task force is moving us closer to that goal.

Ana Tomšić, MPH, CHES, is the vice president at Men’s Health Network.