Welcome from PAE President
Joop van Griensven, PAE President
This promises to be another very exciting newsletter because we do have news for you.
Let me start first by thanking you all who participated in the PAE 2108 survey. The response was even bigger than last year, which made us very happy. This shows that we touched on a subject which is of importance for the chronic pain patient. Hopefully, we will be able to provide some info on this during the next PAE General Assembly.
PAE is planning its annual General Assembly for June 19th. This General Assembly will be followed the next day by the Brain, Mind and Pain Interest Group meeting in the morning and the Grant Ceremony as an event during lunch. More than enough reasons to be part of this all. Read the newsletter for more details.
Maybe you have already heard that the Stakeholders Group of the Societal Impact of Pain on the EU Health Platform has become a Thematic Network. The main task of this network is to provide suggestions via a joint position paper to the EU institutions on how to improve the situation for the chronic pain patient. We do that with everyone who is willing to participate and who is active on the Health Policy Platform. So if you haven’t registered yet, this is now the time to do so. Bring forward your ideas, take part in the discussions so we can include yours in the plans. Let’s show that the pain community across Europe can work together and provide solid ideas on how to improve the situation. This includes what we, as patient organizations, can do ourselves.
However, this is not the only news we have for you. As you may know, PAE has good relations with the pharmaceutical world as they are a key stakeholder for chronic pain patients. In that light, we have strengthened our relations with the Pfizer/Lilly combination which is dealing with chronic pain. As patient representatives, we have given them advice on the patients’ needs in the broad context of quality of life.
PAE is always looking for options to get involved in research which aims to improve the quality of life of people with chronic pain. At the moment we are involved in three projects of which we will tell you more about during the General Assembly on June 19th.
In the past period the relation with the European Pain Federation has been further improved and we are working closely together in the HPP Stakeholders’ Group and the HPP Thematic Network on SIP, other SIP activities,and we are involved with their scientific position paper and the planning of their symposium for 2019.
PAE has also been active in several events across Europe. We were in Malta to give information on last year’s survey. We were in London to support patient representatives for the Pfizer/Lilly advisory board meeting. We have also been involved in the European Parliament meeting of ACN – Sine Dolore, about the Pain theme park in Menorca.
So all-in-all, it’s been an active period for PAE which hopefully will start a very good summer for the chronic pain patient across Europe.
Joop van Griensven
President Pain Alliance Europe
