Joint pain affects millions of people who suffer from a wide variety of ailments and conditions. Chronic joint pain can be manageable, but treatment is often inadequate, and patients may continue to suffer. Indeed, medications are sometimes unsafe, making rehabilitation and physical therapy essential.
Joint pain also can exact substantial financial and other costs -- high medical expenses, lost work days, and diminished quality and productivity in people's work and personal lives. Aging populations, sedentary lifestyles, and an increasing propensity toward obesity all mean that the problem of joint pain is likely to continue unabated worldwide.
IASP's 2016 Global Year Against Pain in the Joints campaign will address these issues and concerns in the following ways:
- Disseminating information on joint pain
- Connecting pain researchers to health-care professionals who interact with patients
- Increasing awareness of joint pain among government officials, the news media, the general public, and patient organizations worldwide, and
- Encouraging government leaders, research institutions, and other individuals and organizations to support research aimed at producing more effective and accessible treatment methods and outcomes for people with joint pain
