TY - JOUR AU - Amir Ramezani AU - Lori K. Roberto AU - Alex L. Andrade AU - Charles DeMesa AU - Ryan Carver AU - Raheel A. Khan AU - Leslie Aria AU - Daniel Rockers AU - Lisa Barry AU - Cassandra Rasmussen AU - Saideh Malekafzali AU - Maji Singh Aurora AU - Catherine Cohen AU - Carrie G. Rogers AU - Stacie Lloyd PY - 2018/12/01 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Taking on a Community Solutions Process (Co-Solve) to the Pain and Opioid Epidemic: A Multi-disciplinary and Multi-institute Pain Panel and Community Response in Sacramento, California JF - Californian Journal of Health Promotion JA - CALIF J HEALTH PROMOT VL - 16 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - 10.32398/cjhp.v16i2.2093 UR - https://journals.calstate.edu/cjhp/article/view/2093 AB - America’s healthcare providers and patients are challenged by an overwhelming high prevalence of chronic pain and opioid misuse. Approximately 23.4 million adults suffer from daily pain and in 2014, nearly 61% of Americans who died from drug overdoses used an opioid analgesic. Unrecognized addiction, untreated psychiatric comorbidity, and lack of training/education for providers and patients are factors associated with chronic pain and opioid misuse. Communication strategies and structures are required to enhance collaboration between multidisciplinary providers and institutions. On September 28, 2017, an open panel discussion with pain specialists from three major academic and medical institutes in Sacramento, California initiated an integrative community solutions process to optimize pain education best practices and to protect public health. The attendees represented a wide range of healthcare disciplines. This commentary describes ideas derived from dialogue between community attendees and panelists, which considers both healthcare provider characteristics and patients’ cultural backgrounds. Providers of most disciplines underscored the need to share information and institute cross-disciplinary training on pain and behavioral health treatments. In conclusion, we outline an integrative community-based framework, namely the Community Solutions Process (Co-Solve), to help other communities to implement and derive their own action-oriented solutions unique to their population. ER -