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Save the date: PainAdelaide 2023

Pain Adelaide

PainAdelaide is on again, Monday 30th October 2023 at the National Wine Centre. Make sure you put it in your diary and register your interest below if you are not already on our mailing list to be one of the first to know when registrations open.

We are currently working on the program but once again it will be another stellar line up for what is possibly the best little pain meeting in the world.

Registrations now Open!

Registrations are NOW OPEN for probably the best little pain meeting in the world. 

Date – Tuesday 12th March 2019

We have a fantastic line-up of speakers – Dr Melanie Noel from Calgary | Dr Lauren Heathcote from Oxford/Stanford | Dr Siobhan Schabrun |Dr David Seminowicz | Prof Daniel Hutto | Prof Roland Sussex | Dr David Butler | Joshua Pate | Dr Emma Karran | the infamous PainAdelaide Q & A and a few other surprises!

We are back at the National Wine Centre again and as per previous years, Numbers are strictly limited so you will need to be quick.

Register for PainAdelaide here. Cost is $120 for full registration, Students are $80 (copy of student id needs to be emailed through along with supervisors name), payment is by Visa or Mastercard.

 

Meet the 2019 Pain Adelaide Speakers

Meet some of the speakers for the 2019 Pain Adelaide conference, Tuesday March 12 at the National Wine Center Adelaide…  possibly the best little pain meeting in the world….

Daniel Hutto

Dan HuttoDaniel D. Hutto is Senior Professor of Philosophical Psychology and Head of the School of Liberal Arts at the University of Wollongong. He has served Australian Research Council College of Experts, chairing its Humanities and Creative Arts panel in 2017, and conducts peer reviews for national grant awarding bodies worldwide such as ERC (EU); AHRC, MRC (UK); NEH; NSF (USA). He has been awarded 12 external research grants and is the author of award-winning, highly cited research, with 7 books (3 with MIT Press) and over 120 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and books chapters to his name. He is co-author of the award-winning Radicalizing Enactivism (MIT, 2013) and its sequel, Evolving Enactivism (MIT, 2017). His other recent books, include: Folk Psychological Narratives (MIT, 2008) and Wittgenstein and the End of Philosophy (Palgrave, 2006). He is editor of Narrative and Understanding Persons (CUP, 2007) and Narrative and Folk Psychology (Imprint Academic, 2009). A special yearbook, Radical Enactivism, focusing on his philosophy of intentionality, phenomenology and narrative, was published in 2006. He is regularly invited to speak internationally, not only at philosophy conferences but at expert meetings of anthropologists, clinicians, educationalists, narratologists, neuroscientists and psychologists.

Dr Lauren Heathcote

Dr. Lauren Heathcote is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. She studies the interaction of physical and psychological health in young people. She is particularly interested in the way that we perceive pain as a threat to our bodies, and how this impacts the experience of pain and its emotional consequences, especially in adolescence. She previously completed her PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, where she examined cognitive biases in adolescents with chronic pain. She now focuses on the experience of pain and other physical sensations, such as fatigue and breathlessness, in adolescents and young adults who have survived cancer. The aim of her research is to improve the lives of young people who have experienced cancer through conducting innovative clinical and experimental research, developing evidence-based psychological interventions, and contributing to best clinical practice guidelines for long-term follow-up care.

Dr Melanie Noel

Melanie is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Calgary and a Full Member of the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute and the Hotchkiss Brain Institute. She directs the Alberta Children’s Pain Research Lab within the Vi Riddell Pain & Rehabilitation Centre at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Noel’s expertise is on children’s memories for pain and co-occurring mental health issues and pediatric chronic pain. She published conceptual models of children’s pain memory development, co-occurring PTSD and chronic pain, and fear-avoidance (70 peer-reviewed papers, H index = 20). In recognition of her contributions to advancing knowledge of the psychological aspects of children’s pain, she received early career awards from the Society of Pediatric Psychology, the International Association for the Study of Pain, the Canadian Pain Society, and the Canadian Psychological Association.

Dr. Noel is an advocate for the use of developmentally tailored psychological interventions for pediatric pain management and serves on committees to promote and implement evidence-based interventions within her children’s hospital and beyond. As an evidence lead on the Help Eliminate Pain in Kids and Adults team, Dr. Noel co-authored clinical practice guidelines for pain and fear management for vaccine injections. Many of these recommendations were adopted by the World Health Organization.

Dr Siobhan Schabrun

Siobhan is a NHMRC Career Development Fellow, Senior Research Scientist and group leader at Neuroscience Research Australia. She has an undergraduate degree in Physiotherapy and a PhD in Neuroscience, specifically in the assessment and induction of neuroplasticity in humans, and has contributed more than 80 publications to the field. Dr Schabrun’s work is centred on the exploration of neuroplasticity in pain using clinical populations and human transitional pain models and seeks to advance our understanding of the pathophysiology, treatment and prevention of chronic musculoskeletal pain.

A/Prof David A. Seminowicz

David is Associate Professor in the Department of Neural and Pain Sciences, School of Dentistry, University of Maryland, Baltimore. He received a BSc from the University of Guelph, a PhD at the University of Toronto and completed postdoctoral training at McGill University. His work has focused on the cognitive aspects of pain, individual differences in the response to pain, and the consequence of chronic pain on brain structure and function. His studies have clarified how pain-related and cognitive-related brain activity interact and how passive and active pain coping strategies affect these types of activity. His work further suggested a brain mechanism through which chronic pain might affect cognitive ability and continues testing this hypothesis in intervention studies in people with chronic pain. The clinical populations in these studies include chronic low back pain, chronic and episodic migraine, and burning mouth syndrome. Dr. Seminowicz has also used rodent MRI to ask a question that could not easily be addressed in humans, such as how the brain changes over time from before the onset of an injury that leads to chronic pain to the time when the disease affects cognitive and affective behaviors. Ongoing studies in Dr. Seminowicz’s lab employ longitudinal designs to assess how various interventions affect brain function, in human disease and rodent models. The main techniques in his lab include quantitative sensory testing, EEG, and structural and functional MRI. His main funding is from the NIH, and smaller projects are funding through intercampus initiatives, private foundations, and industry.

Save the date: PainAdelaide 2022

Pain Adelaide

PainAdelaide is on again, Monday 31st October 2022 at the National Wine Centre. Make sure you put it in your diary and register your interest below if you are not already on our mailing list to be one of the first to know when registrations open.

We are currently working on the program but once again it will be another stellar line up for what is possibly the best little pain meeting in the world.

Registrations are now OPEN

Registrations are NOW OPEN for probably the best little pain meeting in the world – PainAdelaide 2018!

We are back at the National Wine Centre, Monday 19th March and as per previous years, Numbers are strictly limited so you will need to be quick.

Check out this line-up:

Dr Laura Simons is Associate Professor of Anaesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University. With a Masters and PhD in Clinical Psychology and post-doctoral training at Boston Children’s Hospital, Laura’s team investigates the biological, neurological, cognitive, affective, and social risk and resiliency factors of persistent pain in adolescents.

Dr Jennifer Stinson is Mary Jo Haddad Nursing Chair in Child Health and an Advanced Practice Nurse in the Chronic Pain Program at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Canada. Her major clinical research interests are in the area of pain and symptom management and the use of e-health (internet) and m-health (mobile phones) technologies to improve the assessment and management of pain and other symptoms in  chronic illnesses.

But that’s not all! You also get:

A/Prof Sarah Spencer from RMIT will talk to us about metabolism stress and inflammation,

Dr Gila Moalem-Taylor from University of NSW will wax lyrical about immune mechanisms in neuropathic pain,

Prof Jakob Hohwy from Monash will enlighten us about consciousness and philosophy of mind,

Dr Chris Williams from University of Newcastle will talk up the role of pain within diseases that kill us,

Don’t forget the Infamous PainAdelaide Q&A hosted by Stellar Sam Whittle and a couple of local stars thrown in.

We are back at the National Wine Centre again and as per previous years, Numbers are strictly limited so you will need to be quick.

Registration can be done via the link below, cost is $120 for full registration, Students are $80 (copy of student id needs to be emailed through along with supervisors name), payment is by Visa or Mastercard.

PainAdelaide 2018 Registration

Registrations will close Monday 12th March, unless booked out prior

Ride for Pain

Did you know that chronic pain is the planet’s most burdensome health issue?

Did you know that it costs our communities more than cancer and diabetes combined? Not to mention the massive social, economic and emotional burden on sufferers and their families – over 15% of Australians have a chronic pain condition that reduces their quality of life.

Scientific evidence shows that the first step towards reducing this massive burden is to increase understanding of the problem and its solution.

PainAdelaide is a collaboration between our three major universities, Pfizer, WorkcoverSA, MAC, The RAH, and SAHMRI (the groovy new medical research building on North Terrace!). We are a network of scientists, health professionals and consumers who are dedicated to taking on this massive challenge.

The Ride for Pain is one way you can help, and help yourself in the process. This is a unique, challenging and altogether fantastic community cycling event. It will be intentionally tough.

We want to give you an insight into what it is like to have chronic pain and what it takes to recover. Everyone either has chronic pain, is related to someone who does, plays, works or goes to school with someone who does – this is everyone’s problem.

Adelaide is one of the most important pain research and management centres on the planet. Now it is your turn to get involved. Take on your pain challenge. Can you ride for six hours? Four? Even two. It is all about YOU conquering YOUR pain challenge.

Start preparing now for what stands to become Adelaide’s premier cycling challenge. Take it on!

“Pain is one of the most awful human experiences, which is what makes it one of the most effective – it makes us protect our body. Chronic pain occurs when biological processes keep telling the brain that the body is in danger. The huge challenge of pain is that it is not simply about your body, but about your brain’s evaluation of threat to your body. The factors that contribute to pain can be really complex and sometimes very difficult to spot. All pain, 100% of the time, is a perception constructed by our brain. Scientific studies clearly show that once we realise this complexity of pain and that pain is an intensely individual and personal thing, once we know it in the belly of our nervous system, we greatly increase our chances of recovery. By riding in the Ride for Pain, you will help us reduce the massive personal and societal cost of chronic pain. We really REALLY appreciate your support.”

Professor Lorimer Moseley PhD FACP

Professor of Clinical Neurosciences & Chair, PainAdelaide

Kevin Vowles is coming to PainAdelaide!

We are very pleased to announce that Associate Professor Kevin Vowles will be joining us at possibly the best little pain meeting in the world, PainAdelaide, on March 30th 2015.
Kevin has a PhD in Clinical Psychology and has been an integral part of developing novel interdisciplinary pain care around the Acceptance & Commitment Therapy framework.

Kevin Vowles

After positions at the University of Bath, and then the Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre at Keele University, he returned to the USA and is now Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico. His is one of the most important voices in the application of ACT to chronic pain and his current clinical research is funded by the US National Institutes of Health (their version of NHMRC). He has written 55 papers and includes the prestigious UK Health Integration Award in his trophy cabinet.

Join Kevin, and some other shining stars – Bob Coghill, Glen King, Peter O’Sullivan, Stuart Brierley to name just a few – at PainAdelaide 2015. Get in early or you might be stuck on the waiting list.
Register here