The Chronic Pain Centre of Excellence partners with veterans and their families to lead a national community of care and shape the future of veteran-first chronic pain management. At the Centre of Excellence, we put veterans at the heart of everything we do: from setting the research agenda, to developing evidence-based practices, and helping veterans access care closer to home.

The Centre of Excellence partners with veterans and families to genuinely understand their unique challenges and day-to-day needs to manage their chronic pain, including exploring barriers to access care, veterans’ experiences with the discharge process from active service, the interchange between civilian and VAC healthcare services, and the intersection chronic pain has with mental illness and feelings of hopelessness and isolation.

Veterans are an essential part of our executive leadership, our Board of Directors, and make up our national Veterans Working Groups to ensure that we’re building a knowledge system that addresses the real-world needs of Canadian veterans and their families.

As the Centre of Excellence’s first step towards building a chronic pain system that works for veterans and their families, we will launch our Rapid Recommendations this summer. These Rapid Recommendations will be a shortlist of the current best practices that pain clinics and case managers can use to help veterans manage their chronic pain.

The Centre of Excellence’s activities, goals, and priorities are driven by our ongoing research, working with clinics to fine-tune best practices, and – most importantly – listening to veterans and their families. Over the long-term, the Centre of Excellence will be involved in initiating clinical trials to further develop new therapies for managing pain, growing the network of pain clinics and researchers across Canada, and continuously measuring the metrics associated with timely access to care and quality of life for veterans and their families.