North East health campaign takes home gold at prestigious national awards

A unique partnership of North East organisations which raises awareness of chronic pain has been named a gold winner in the highly-acclaimed Health Service Journal (HSJ) annual Partnership Awards.

Chronic pain is more prevalent in the North East than any other part of England and is thought to affect around 43% of people regionally, with opioid prescription rates 300% higher than in London.

A first-of-its-kind public and private sector collaboration was forged to tackle the issue head on. It aimed to directly reach those living with chronic pain, overcome barriers to physical exercise and challenge outdated perceptions and beliefs relating to pain management and treatment.

Public health campaign Flippin Pain involved NHS North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board, Tees Valley Sport Active Partnership, Teesside University and You’ve Got This. The organisations pooled resources and expertise to co-create and deliver a series of targeted events and activities for the public and health professionals.

These included the Flippin’ Pain Tees Valley Outreach Tour, which included educational workshops, public seminars and experiential pop-ups. More than 1,500 people joined the sessions, which were led by a team of pain professionals, educators and community champions, including world-leading pain scientist Professor Lorimer Moseley, and Teesside University professor of clinical rehabilitation, Professor Cormac Ryan.

Professor Ryan, a community pain champion for public health initiative Flippin’ Pain, led many of the public consultation events. He said: “We are so proud of this collaboration – it really does prove that by working together we can have more impact and truly affect positive change.

“Our objective with Flippin’ Pain has always been to ‘flip’ people’s understanding of pain – to change the way they think about it, talk about it, and treat it, and this award win evidences that we’re doing just that, and in a really meaningful way.”

As a direct result of the tour, more than one third of attendees living with chronic pain reported that they could better manage their own pain; 87% said they recognised their beliefs about pain management were outdated; and almost half said they were more likely to consider tapering their opioid use.

Renowned as one of the most prestigious industry events in the healthcare calendar, the HSJ Partnership Awards recognised 188 finalists. The Tees Valley team beat off stiff competition from eight other contenders to win gold in the Most Impactful Partnership in Preventative Healthcare category.

Flippin’ Pain is a public health campaign which aims to change the way people think about, talk about and treat chronic pain.

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