INSPiRE: Involving Native Stakeholders in Pain Research Efforts

Emery Eaves, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, has been approved for a $50,000 funding award by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to support a project in collaboration with community partner and co-lead Cora Phillips, MSW, and Julie Baldwin, Director of NAU’s Center for Health Equity Research, entitled “Involving Native Stakeholders in Pain Research Efforts (INSPiRE).” Dr. Eaves and Ms. Phillips will use the funds provided through PCORI’s Pipeline to Proposal Awards program to build a partnership of individuals and groups who share a desire to advance patient-centered outcomes research focused on improving chronic pain management and reducing opioid overuse in Tribal communities. Pipeline to Proposal Awards enable individuals and groups that are not typically involved in clinical research to develop the means to develop community-led funding proposals focused on patient-centered comparative effectiveness research (CER). Established by the non-profit PCORI, the program funds help individuals or groups build community partnerships, develop research capacity, and hone a comparative effectiveness research question that could become the basis of a research funding proposal to submit to PCORI or other health research funders.

The proposed project will build on existing partnerships to engage local, regional, and national stakeholders in taking culturally informed and evidence-based first steps toward addressing pressing needs for chronic pain management and opioid overuse support in Arizona’s Tribal Communities