September 2025 President’s Message

Dear AAPM members and colleagues,

As I write to you on the eve of Labor Day, I would like to thank you and your teams for all your important work on beh

alf of patients with acute and chronic pain. With this month’s message, I will focus on an American Academy of Pain Medicine solution to improving patient access to pain treatments: Pain Perspectives. With rising rates of chronic pain in the United States, coupled with recently declining fellowship applications in pain medicine, now more than ever, we must work together to ensure patients have access to the pain care they need.

My pain clinic’s primary challenge when it comes to patient feedback is access. Our wait list and wait times are just too long. When I finally meet a patient who has been waiting months to see me, I often wonder why their referring provider did not make some initial recommendations, from medications to physical therapy to online resources for pain. One solution we can all stand behind is that healthcare providers must have the basic tools and knowledge to guide patients to team-based pain therapies, regardless of their discipline and specialty. And it is up to all of us to make sure this happens.

At Harvard Medical School, where I teach, pain management did not have an official place in the curriculum until 2016. In response to rising deaths from opioids, the governor of Massachusetts mandated that pain and substance use be taught in our state’s medical schools. This means that some of the country’s top physicians who graduated more than 7 years ago never learned about pain medicine!

This brings me to Pain Perspectives, a new course by stellar faculty from the American Academy of Pain Medicine. This course comprises brief learning modules intended not only for people like us but also for our colleagues from all healthcare disciplines to learn from leading AAPM pain educators. I hope you will spread the word at your institution and beyond.

I recently spoke with one of the course’s faculty members, Dr. Amber Borucki, a pediatric pain specialist at Stanford University. We discussed how to optimize the bridge from adolescence to adulthood for patients with chronic pain, strategies for pain prevention and improving youth resiliency, and more. Did you know that chronic pain is a significant issue in pediatric and adolescent populations with similar rates as adults? I previously thought chronic pain in kids was uncommon. Dr. Borucki shared with me that estimates suggest that 10–38% of children and adolescents experience chronic pain, with some studies reporting rates as high as 46%. A 2023 survey of over 1,000 children and parents found that 5% of school-aged children experience high-impact chronic pain —pain that leads to substantial functional impairment.

Despite the high rates of pain in children, Dr. Borucki shows us that there is much we can do together to treat and prevent pain in our youth.

You can also benefit from learning from experts like Dr. Borucki and check out the Pain Perspectives course! I also encourage you to share this with your colleagues as an introduction or refresher on best practices in managing pain for their patients, regardless of their specialty. Pain medicine treatment strategies should be accessible for all. It is up to us to champion these best practices and guide our colleagues to practical resources for their patients. Thank you to the amazing faculty for sharing your expertise.

I hope you had a restful long weekend (and hopefully some time off!) and are recharged for the new month ahead. I am back from some water sports in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The nights were cool, and the countdown is now on for me for ski season!

Antje Barreveld, MD
AAPM President
LinkedIn: @antje-barreveld
X: @AntjeBarreveld