PROJECT SUMMARY
Chronic pain and opioid use disorder (OUD) are major public health problems. Despite the alarming increases
in opioid misuse and OUD, few integrated treatments target both chronic pain and OUD. Integrated holistic
treatments are desperately needed that simultaneously address pain and opioid use, the fundamental causes
of pain and OUD, and that focus on whole person functioning and well-being among individuals with chronic
pain and opioid misuse/OUD. The University of New Mexico (UNM) Integrative Management of chronic Pain
and Opioid use disorder for Whole Recovery (IMPOWR) Center will take an integrated and holistic approach to
improving the lives of patients with chronic pain and opioid misuse/OUD via tailored intervention approaches to
meet the needs of diverse individuals in diverse communities. We will explicitly target increasing quality of life
and engagement in valued activities, the cultural centering of interventions to meet the needs of diverse patient
populations, and reducing stigma of chronic pain and opioid misuse and OUD. The approaches proposed in
our IMPOWR Center will directly target whole person functioning and well-being among individuals with chronic
pain and misuse/OUD. Our goals are to develop, test, and implement scalable, generalizable, and sustainable
provider- and patient-level interventions that are focused on improving functioning and can be delivered in
diverse health care settings. To maximize impact, we have established a diverse Stakeholder Consultation
Board (including people with lived experience and other stakeholders) and a Scientific Advisory Board
(including experts in chronic pain, opioid misuse/OUD, and implementation science), and aim to build a
sustainable workforce of researchers and providers devoted to ameliorating chronic pain and OUD via training
and mentoring. All Center projects will embrace principles of community-based participatory research, team
science, implementation science, economic evaluation, and open science. Consistent with our patient-centered
approach, assessment of opioid use and chronic pain will be complemented with measures of psychosocial
functioning and other important life domains, including stigma, engagement in valued activities, and quality of
life. Projects will include economic evaluation to measure cost-effectiveness of our interventions from a societal
perspective. Specific research projects will test the effectiveness, mechanisms, and implementation of an
integrated psychosocial treatment for chronic pain and OUD among individuals receiving buprenorphine from
outpatient OUD treatment clinics, and will use community-based participatory research methods to develop a
culturally-centered implementation intervention for screening and brief intervention of chronic pain and OUD
among American Indian/Alaska Native patients in primary care settings. Pilot projects focused on chronic pain
and OUD will be selected by our Stakeholder Consultation Board. The UNM IMPOWR Center is committed to
data harmonization, sharing of study resources, and provider training to enhance the reach, effectiveness,
adoption, implementation, and maintenance of evidence-based treatments for chronic pain and OUD.