Health Research Council funding for co-creating a digital self-help intervention for pain-related disabilities - iSelf-help

University of Otago researchers led by Professor Leigh Hale, School of Physiotherapy in Dunedin and other researchers based in University of Otago, Wellington - Drs Hemakumar Devan and Meredith Perry, School of Physiotherapy, and Dr Rebecca Grainger, Dr Tristram Ingham, Bernadette Jones, William Leung, Andrew Gray, Professor Tony Dowell, and Professor Ted Shipton from Christchurch will be working on a major Health Research Council funded project to co-create a digital self-help intervention (iSelf-help) for people with persistent pain and their whānau.

In this collaborative research project with Capital & Coast District Health Board (CCDHB) Pain Management Service (Dagmar Hempel and Barbara Saipe, Physiotherapists) and Tu Kutahi Māori Asthma Research Trust (Cheryl Davies), they will develop and co-design with patients an online-delivered intervention called iSelf-help to help reduce pain-related disabilities. The co-design process will ensure iSelf-help is evidence-based, culturally appropriate, and delivered online. The team will evaluate its clinical and cost-effectiveness compared to group-based, in-person delivered multidisciplinary pain management programs (PMP) in CCDHB.

Persistent non-cancer pain affects more than one in five New Zealanders. Māori, people living in areas of high deprivation, and older adults are at greatest risk. The best evidence for longer-term benefits of persistent pain management are for group based, multidisciplinary PMP focusing on behavioural interventions. But with poor access to multidisciplinary PMP for people living in remote and rural areas, web-based technologies are an alternative way to deliver behavioural interventions. This will be the first study to have patient co-design and compared to group-based, in-person PMPs internationally.

For more information on this programme of work, please see Otago Pain BITS website.