Backcare, The Charity for Healthier Backs

President name: Dr Brian Hammond
Vice President name: Dr Adam Al-Kashi
Secretary: Helen Horton

BackCare is a British medical research charity dedicated to the management of back problems. It was founded in 1968 by Stanley Grundy, CBE, who suffered from chronic back pain but was disappointed to find out that, at that time, there was a lack of information and research in this area. As a result he founded the Back Pain Research Association, which was later renamed the National Back Pain Association (NBPA) and is now known as ‘BackCare, the Charity for Healthier Backs’. Today, BackCare aims to reduce the burden of back pain by providing information and support, promoting good practice and funding research. BackCare acts as the hub between patients, healthcare professionals, employers, policy makers, researchers and all others with an interest in back pain.

Back pain is the leading cause of lost work days, and the second most common painful neurological ailment, yet it is not widely recognised nor acknowledged as such. BackCare’s objectives are threefold: firstly, to raise awareness of back health issues through its campaigns and educational media activities; secondly, to facilitate cutting edge back pain research by direct funding as well as by hosting and mediating new research collaborations; and thirdly, to provide support to back pain sufferers through its helpline and nationwide network of local support groups.

BackCare hopes to see PAE become the accepted voice of an evolution in chronic pain management, representing an integration of biomedical, psychosocial and technoeconomic domains. In short, to challenge and change the way we currently understand and deal with chronic pain at all levels – personally, organisationally and governmentally.