Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-23-2020

Publication Title

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Publisher

MDPI

Volume

17

Issue

12

First page number:

1

Last page number:

24

Abstract

Chronic pain and the opioid epidemic need early, upstream interventions to aim at meaningful downstream behavioral changes. A recent pain neuroscience education (PNE) program was developed and tested for middle-school students to increase pain knowledge and promote healthier beliefs regarding pain. In this study, 668 seventh-grade middle-school students either received a PNE lecture (n = 220); usual curriculum school pain education (UC) (n = 198) or PNE followed by two booster (PNEBoost) sessions (n = 250). Prior to, immediately after and at six-month follow-up, pain knowledge and fear of physical activity was measured. Six months after the initial intervention school, physical education, recess and sports attendance/participation as well as healthcare choices for pain (doctor visits, rehabilitation visits and pain medication use) were measured. Students receiving PNEBoost used 30.6% less pain medication in the last 6 months compared to UC (p = 0.024). PNEBoost was superior to PNE for rehabilitation visits in students experiencing pain (p = 0.01) and UC for attending school in students who have experienced pain > 3 months (p = 0.004). In conclusion, PNEBoost yielded more positive behavioral results in middle school children at six-month follow-up than PNE and UC, including significant reduction in pain medication use.

Keywords

Pain; Neuroscience; Education; School; Children; Behavior change

Disciplines

Public Health Education and Promotion

File Format

pdf

File Size

1.754 KB

Language

English

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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