NCCIH Research Blog

On Monday, June 4, at 11 a.m. to noon ET, Mary Jo Larson, Ph.D., M.P.A., will deliver a lecture on “Caring for Our Military: Considering Nondrug Therapies for Pain,” as part of NCCIH’s Integrative Medicine Research Lecture Series. Her talk will take place on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, and will be streamed live and archived for later viewing at videocast.nih.gov.

Dr. Larson will provide an introduction to the U.S. Military Health System and its treatment of pain, including recent innovations. Trends in the military system include movement toward a culture of pain awareness, expanded use of nondrug treatments, and a full continuum of best-practice pain services. These changes are in concert with the report of the Pain Management Task Force convened in 2009 by the U.S. Army Surgeon General, which yielded more than 100 recommendations on a holistic, multidisciplinary, and multimodal strategy to manage pain. Dr. Larson will also discuss her NCCIH-funded research study on the characteristics and clinical needs of U.S. Army soldiers returning from deployments, the types of treatments (drug and nondrug) that they receive, and the associated outcomes.

Dr. Larson is a senior scientist at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University. Her research focus is on improving health care systems—most recently, systems that care for military members and their families affected by chronic pain or behavioral health conditions. Funders of her research include NCCIH, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the U.S. Department of Defense. She has served on two committees of the National Academy of Medicine, co-authoring the reports Substance Abuse Disorders in the U.S. Armed Forces and Preventing Psychological Disorders in Service Members and Their Families: An Assessment of Programs.

You can read more about Dr. Larson's upcoming lecture or find information about research on pain in military personnel and veteran populations, including NCCIH-sponsored projects, on our Web site.

On April 23, our previous speaker in this lecture series, Erin Krebs, M.D., M.P.H., spoke at NIH on “Reframing the Primary Care Management of Chronic Pain.” Dr. Krebs is associate professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School and was lead author of a study recently published in JAMA on pain medications in patients at Veterans Affairs primary care clinics. Her lecture is available on the NIH Videocast Web site.