Supporting PHNs to reduce the burden of chronic pain

It also played an important role in supporting collaboration and information sharing between PHNs to support implementation. Download the Findings Brief for a summary of the key findings and relevance for policy and practice.

Key messages

• Chronic pain is a major and growing public health issue.
• Specialist pain clinics have long waiting lists and are unable to meet increasing demand. Primary health care is the most important point for intervention to improve access to care.
• Our project focused on Primary Health Networks (PHNs) as the commissioning bodies and supporters of primary care services.
• We synthesised the evidence about chronic pain initiatives in primary care, and consulted with PHNs to understand their needs, priorities and gaps, and to map their chronic pain initiatives.
• We also surveyed experts to identify the enablers of community-based pain programs and surveyed PHNs to identify existing programs.
• Few PHNs are identifying the need for, and adequately addressing, the secondary prevention and management of chronic pain in primary care.
• We identified a small number of evidence-based chronic pain initiatives that PHNs are currently implementing (such as Project ECHO) that are suitable for scale-up across Australia.
• Dedicated funding and collaboration between PHNs and local health networks, agencies and non-government organisations are needed to ensure scale-up and sustainability of these initiatives.