#SeePainMoreClearly Campaign Wins National Award

MEDIA RELEASE

For Release - March 1st, 2021

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE CENTRE ON AGING & HEALTH UNIVERSITY OF REGINA

Campaign Wins National Award

PAIN AWARENESS AWARD 2021

The goals of the award is to raise awareness of the problem of undermanaged pain in Canada, to highlight efforts toward finding solutions to the problem, and to reach a national audience. The selection was made by a committee formed by the Canadian Pain Society.

The Canadian Pain Society (CPS) announced that Dr. Thomas Hadjistavropoulos, Ph.D, Research Chair in Aging and Health, University of Regina is the 2021 recipient of the Pain Awareness Award. Dr Hadjistavropoulos leads the #SeePainMoreClearly Campaign which has now been recognized nationally as the 2021 Best Pain Awareness Project. The #SeePainMoreClearly team members represent research, clinical practice, long-term care administration and includes caregiver partners. A full list of team members can be found here: https://www.seepainmoreclearly.org/team

See all past Canadian Pain Society Pain Awareness Award recipients here: https://www.canadianpainsociety.ca/page-1075365#Awareness

2016 recipient, Christine Chambers is also a SeePainMoreClearly team member https://www.seepainmoreclearly.org/team

The goal of #SeePainMoreClearly is to bring attention to the problem of undermanaged pain in people with dementia who live in long-term care facilities and to increase familiarity with potential solutions.

#SeePainMoreClearlyCampaign

Funded by the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation and the Saskatchewan Centre of Patient Oriented Research and in partnership with national and provincial organizations (e.g: AGE-WELL Network of Centres of Excellence, Canadian Association of Gerontology, Alzheimer Society of Saskatchewan), health care personnel, patients and family, researchers and health care administrators; we launched an international social media campaign #SeePainMoreClearly to increase awareness of the underassessment and undermanagement of pain in dementia by disseminating evidence-based findings and practices.

#SeePainMoreClearly Campaign Update

The #SeePainMoreClearly social media awareness campaign launched as an initial pilot project on Twitter in 2019. During its pilot phase, the campaign social media posts gathered over 5.7 million impressions in 5 months with the hashtag used in 31 countries. The initial pilot campaign fueled the team to successfully apply for funding support for the implementation and evaluation of a larger campaign involving a digital media partner. The second phase of the campaign was launched on October 1 2020 and expanded into a variety of social media platforms (e.g., Facebook Instagram). Over 23.6k people have visited https://www.seepainmoreclearly.org to find out more about pain in dementia and to offer their help by participating in the study about the impact of the campaign. https://www.seepainmoreclearly.org/participate-in-our-study

Many people have also visited the website to read the #SeePainMoreClearly blog, which features guest post articles from highly respected researchers, scientists, medical professionals, family members and caregivers of dementia patients, dementia sufferers and even an article in collaboration with award winning author Louise Penny. The top blog post has had over 2000 pageviews to date. The #SeePainMoreClearly team is grateful to all organisations that have supported their activities. These organisations include the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation, the Saskatchewan Centre for Patient Oriented Research, the AGE WELL Network of Centres of Excellence, the Chronic Pain Network, the Canadian Association in Gerontology, the Alzheimer Society of Saskatchewan, the University of Regina and others.

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO CONTACT FOR INTERVIEW:

Contact: Thomas Hadjistavropoulos, Ph.D. - Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Regina; Research Chair in Aging and Health

Email: thomas.hadjistavropoulos@uregina.ca

Website: https://www.seepainmoreclearly.org

https://youtu.be/4gBSGFAQ2mw