Week two of Pain Awareness Month, and the national theme is Countless Diagnoses.
Here is the problem that phrase points at. “Chronic pain” gets discussed as though it were one condition. It is not. It is a category containing conditions that share almost nothing except that they hurt.
Temporomandibular disorder and sickle cell disease are both painful. So are knee osteoarthritis, diabetic neuropathy, endometriosis, fibromyalgia, chronic low back pain, migraine, and the pain that follows surgery and never resolves. The biology differs. The treatments differ. The people differ.
What unites them is that each has, at some point, been dismissed. Each has patients who were told the pain was exaggerated, or psychological, or simply something to live with.
PRICE currently has 73 affiliated faculty across the colleges of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, Public Health & Health Professions, Pharmacy, Engineering, and Health & Human Performance — plus collaborators beyond UF. That breadth is not administrative sprawl. It is a direct response to the fact that pain does not respect departmental boundaries.
A dentist studying jaw pain, an engineer modelling joint loading, a nurse scientist studying sickle cell crises, and a neuroscientist imaging the brain are working on genuinely different problems. They are also, unmistakably, working on the same one.
Our research registry covers six areas: pain and aging, chronic pain risk factors, pain and the brain, musculoskeletal pain, pain and exercise, and non-medical treatment of pain. Between them they capture most of what walks through the door.
What we study:
- Pain and Aging
- Chronic Pain Risk Factors
- Pain and the Brain
- Musculoskeletal Pain
- Pain and Exercise
- Non-Medical Treatment of Pain
Prefer to talk to a person? Call 352-273-5967 or email PRICE-CTSI@ufl.edu.
UF Study ID IRB201400126
References
- PRICE Research Registry recruitment materials, UF Study ID IRB201400126. IRB-approved; supplied by site owner. https://is.gd/PRICE
- U.S. Pain Foundation. Pain Awareness Month 2026: #OneVoiceForPain. https://uspainfoundation.org/painawarenessmonth/