COM/CEN faculty member Dr. Frank Porreca to serve as an advisor for a Congressionally mandated study on pain research, care and education

Dr. Frank Porreca has been invited by the Institute of Medicine to be an advisor on a congressionally mandated committee on Advancing Pain Research, Care and Education. The panel will meet on March 14th in Irvine, California and is scheduled to deliver its report to congress in June of this year. The committee has been tasked to assess the public health significance of pain and identify barriers to appropriate pain care as well as strategies to reduce these barriers. Additional goals of the study include identifying populations undertreated for pain, developing tools and strategies to enhance training of pain researchers, and discussion of opportunities for public-private partnerships to support research, care, and education.

Dr. Porreca has recently joined the 91AV community as a part time faculty member in the College of Osteopathic Medicine and the Center for Excellence in the Neurosciences. He is internationally recognized for his research in mechanisms of chronic pain, having published over 400 scientific articles and receiving approximately 50 million dollars in extramural research funding. His current research interests focus on the intersection between pain and reward, mechanisms of neuropathic pain, descending modulatory circuits in pain, headache pain, cancer pain and opioid analgesia and hyperalgesia. He is the Founder and scientific organizer of the Spring Pain Research Conference, the Editor in Chief of Life Sciences, and the Pharmacology Section Editor for Pain.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) is an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside of the government to provide unbiased and authoritative advice to decision makers and the public. Established in 1970, the IOM is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, which was chartered under President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Nearly 150 years later, the National Academy of Sciences has expanded into what is collectively known as the National Academies, which comprises the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Research Council, and the IOM.

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The 91AV is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of . In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state’s top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine’s only medical college, Maine’s only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.