Useful links and materials on chronic pain

Australia

• Better Health Channel
  A website established by the Victorian Government that aims to provide the community with access to online health related information which is quality assured, reliable, up-to-date and locally relevant. Contains various topics related to pain and its management.
• Cancer Council NSW
  An independent community-based charity in NSW that provides information on cancer, support services for cancer patients and their families, education and training for health professionals, and funds research into cancer.
• Chronic Pain Australia
  An organisation dedicated to reducing the unnecessary suffering and isolation caused by chronic pain in the Australian community.
• Headache Australia
  An initiative of the Brain Foundation that aims to is to reduce the incidence and impact of the headache disorder through the provision of community awareness and research.
• healthinsite
  A website funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health that aims to provide Australians with easy access to quality information about human health.
• Hunter Integrated Pain Service
  A website developed by Hunter Integrated Pain Service (HIPS), a multidisciplinary pain management team based in the public hospital system in Newcastle, NSW that aims is to promote and deliver evidence-based, multidimensional care for those with acute, persistent and cancer pain.
• National Prescribing Service
  An independent, non-profit organisation funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health that provides practical tools and information about medicines, health conditions and medical tests.
• Painaustralia
  A national not-for-profit body established to improve the treatment and management of pain in Australia.
• Pain Management Network, Agency for Clinical Innovation
  Lead agency in NSW for promoting innovation, engaging clinicians and designing and implementing new models of care. The Pain Management Network aims to bring together consumers and clinicians to promote equity of access to pain management services for patients with chronic pain, determine priorities for action and develop and support implementation of new evidence-based models of care, to improve integration and co-ordination of care between hospital-based specialist multi-disciplinary pain clinics and community and primary health services.
• Pain Management Research Institute
  A joint initiative between the University of Sydney and Royal North Shore Hospital that conducts basic and clinical research programs, and works in close collaboration with the Pain Management & Research Centre which treats patients with acute pain, cancer pain, and chronic non-cancer pain.
• Therapeutic Goods Administration
  A unit of the Commonwealth Department of Health that carries out a range of assessment and monitoring activities to ensure that therapeutic goods available in Australia are of an acceptable standard with the aim of ensuring that the Australian community has access, within a reasonable time, to therapeutic advances.

Overseas

• American Chronic Pain Association
  A US non-profit organisation that offers support and information for people with chronic pain.
• International Association for the Study of Pain
  A non-profit, multidisciplinary organisation of health professionals dedicated to furthering research on pain and improving the care of patients with pain.
• National Headache Foundation
  A US non-profit organisation that serves as a resource for headache sufferers, their families and the healthcare practitioners who treat them.
• Pain Resource Centre, AboutKidsHealth
  AboutKidsHealth is a non-profit information source for children’s health that aims to improve the health and wellbeing of children in Canada and around the world by making paediatric health care information available around the globe and in multiple languages via the Internet.
• Spine-Health.com
  A website providing information to help patients understand, prevent, and research treatments for back pain and neck pain.
• The Pain Relief Foundation
  A UK charity which funds research into the causes and treatment of human chronic pain and is concerned.

Useful materials

Pamphlets developed for patients with chronic pain by the NSW Therapeutic Advisory Group:

• Pain Management: What You Can Do
• Low Back Pain: What You Can Do
• Migraine: What You Can Do