Week three, and the national theme is Millions of Stories.
Here is the uncomfortable part of that phrase. Stories require a listener. And in pain medicine, whether you are listened to has never been evenly distributed.
Start with prevalence. Chronic pain is not spread uniformly across the population. In 2023, 30.7% of American Indian and Alaska Native non-Hispanic adults reported chronic pain, compared with 11.8% of Asian non-Hispanic adults and 17.1% of Hispanic adults. Prevalence also rose steadily as urbanization decreased — rural Americans carry more chronic pain than urban ones.
Then there is what happens after someone reports pain. A widely cited 2016 study in PNAS found that a substantial share of white medical students and residents endorsed false beliefs about biological differences between Black and white people — including the belief that Black people’s skin is thicker or their nerve endings less sensitive. Those who endorsed such beliefs rated Black patients’ pain as lower and made less accurate treatment recommendations for them.
That study is a decade old. It has been cited thousands of times. It remains one of the clearest demonstrations available that disparities in pain treatment are not solely a matter of access — some of it happens inside the clinical encounter itself.
This week we look at what PRICE researchers are doing about it: work on how structural racism shapes chronic pain, on interventions designed with communities rather than for them, and on a study recruiting right now that centers Black elders.
Millions of stories. The question is which ones get heard.
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
- Lucas JW, Sohi I. Chronic Pain and High-impact Chronic Pain in U.S. Adults, 2023. NCHS Data Brief No. 518. National Center for Health Statistics; November 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db518.htm
- Hoffman KM, Trawalter S, Axt JR, Oliver MN. Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016;113(16):4296-4301. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1516047113
- U.S. Pain Foundation. Pain Awareness Month 2026: #OneVoiceForPain. https://uspainfoundation.org/painawarenessmonth/