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Chronic pain and musculoskeletal disorders are associated with some of the poorest quality-of-life indices. Worldwide, chronic pain afflicts more than 1.5 billion individuals, creating a huge burden of suffering for the individual, and a heavy financial burden for society, which urgently needs to be reduced.

A Grand Challenge of Human Wellbeing Small Grant brought together researchers from the Slade School of Fine Art and the Eastman Dental Hospital to address this problem.

The grant contributed to the face2face project at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) that aimed to show that images can expand pain dialogue in the consulting room to include aspects of experience frequently omitted using traditional measures, such as rate your pain on a scale of one to ten. Over 1,000 photographic images reflecting and symbolising pain were co-created with pain patients. From this material a pilot pack of 54 pain cards was developed and trialed as a communication tool in clinical consultations at »Ê¼Ò»ªÈËH. This project brought together a multi-disciplinary team to analyse this unique material. Grand Challenges funding supported non-verbal analysis, linguistic analysis and input from of an art psychotherapist

The project was featured on  and a follow up two day international conference, Encountering Pain, was held, which explored a range of international and interdisciplinary approaches that can help us better understand encounters with pain both within and beyond the clinic. An article, .  

A paper publishing the methods and analysis of the self-reported ratings was also published in Pain Research & Management. The grant recipients were asked to speak at a number of conferences such as Association of Medical Humanities Conference, Dartington, Visual Culture in Medical Humanities Workshop, Durham University and the Trigeminal neuralgia 10th Conference, USA: New treatments in trigeminal neuralgia.