Chronic Pain HIT

The Chronic Pain Health Integration Team (HIT) brings together clinicians, academics, patients and carers to focus on improving the lives of those with chronic pain.

The challenge

Chronic pain:

affects between 34 and 43% of the adult population
significantly affects people’s quality of life
significant impacts the economy, due to the demand on healthcare and people being unable to work

The most common chronic pain conditions include: non-specific low back pain, regional joint pain, neuropathic pain and widespread musculoskeletal pain/fibromyalgia.

People with chronic pain often don’t respond well to current treatments and may be very disabled as a result of the pain they live with. The care they receive is mainly focused on self-management of persistent pain.

The challenge is to support those who live with chronic pain and those who provide chronic pain services or care.

What we want to achieve

The Chronic Pain Health Integration Team wants everyone living with chronic pain in our region to be able to access the support they need.

We help people living with chronic pain in our region:

have equal access to the most up-to-date information that is backed up by evidence
get support from appropriately trained people in health and social care
take part in research studies that further build the evidence base around chronic pain.

We also want to make people outside of our HIT (including commissioners and policy makers) aware of the impacts of chronic pain on people, society and the economy, and how the HIT can help.

The Chronic Pain HIT covers Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care System (BNSSG ICS) and Bath, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care System (BSW ICS), as the national pain services are based at the Bath National Pain Centre, Royal United Hospital.