2024-2027 | NSIS
Promotor
Jo Nijs
Copromotors
Chronic pain, including but not limited to musculoskeletal and cancer-related pain, is the most prevalent disease worldwide, leading to substantial disability and enormous societal costs. Therefore, chronic pain can be regarded as a public health burden and a major challenge to scientists, clinicians and the affected individuals. Cumulating evidence shows that lifestyle factors such as physical (in)activity, stress, poor sleep, unhealthy diet and smoking are associated with chronic pain severity across all age categories. The network proposed here, the Painless Lifestyle Network, brings together all relevant VUB/UZB experts in the field of chronic pain and lifestyle, including the departments of orthopedics, medical oncology, anesthesiology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, rheumatology, the breast clinic, epidemiology, biostatistics & medical informatics, and both the Stimulus and Pain in Motion research groups. This interdisciplinary network guarantees the creation of social impact through science in the context of lifestyle and chronic pain by a twofold strategy that maps out a clear path from scientific research to valorisation via diverse actions. Work package 1 aims to valorize scientific project results to patients with musculoskeletal and cancer pain, based on the widely-used implementation model by Grol & Wensing and further developed based on guidance for hybrid effectiveness-implementation designs and process evaluations of complex interventions. It contains actions integrated in effectiveness trials as well as post-project activities to transfer the project results to the relevant patients. The Painless Lifestyle Network will work closely together with its broad network of generic and condition-specific stakeholders, ensuring a broad and non-discriminatory transfer of study results to the clinical population and a swift clinical and societal impact throughout the EU & beyond. This implementation strategy will be applied to all clinical trials already conducted or to be conducted within the Painless Lifestyle Network. In Work packages 2 and 3, clinical and cost-effectiveness trials will run with the primary aim to assess if biopsychosocial-(tele)prehabilitation (designed in an ecologically valid way that it is immediately implementable in the Belgian healthcare context) is more clinical and cost-effective than treatment as usual for people undergoing total knee arthroplasty (work package 2) and women undergoing breast cancer surgery at 12 months post-surgery. Results of all work packages will fuel a paradigm shift from a tissue- and disease-based approach towards individually tailored multimodal lifestyle interventions for patients with musculoskeletal and cancer-related chronic pain. This paradigm shift should lead to substantially improved outcomes and decreased psychological and socioeconomic burden of chronic pain.