Pain: Equality of Care and Support within the community

The Pain: Equality of care and support in the community (PEACS) project is a new care pathway being developed for people living with chronic pain in Lambeth and being piloted in the Stockwell Primary Care Network (PCN), a partnership of five GP surgeries.

Background 

People from Black communities experience a higher prevalence of chronic pain, lower rates of access to care and poorer clinical outcomes compared to their fellow White patients.

In response to these findings, Impact on Urban Health commissioned King's Health Partners Mind & Body Programme to co-develop and test a service aimed at improving outcomes for people experiencing chronic pain, with a focus on supporting and working with people from Black communities.

About the project

The pathway has been co-designed with a community design agency, Comuzi. They conducted detailed interviews and focus groups with local residents experiencing chronic pain, their carers, and clinician, putting an emphasis on listening to the experiences of people from Black communities. Accounting for these voices in the design was intended to minimise the impact of structural bias and inequalities in the foundation of the service. In addition it helped us to better understand the bio-psycho-social needs of these groups to provide improved healthcare support, outcomes and experiences.  

What are the notable features of this new service?

• Co-design – We took a bottom-up approach to the development of the care pathway and are continuing to work with our Experts by Experience.
• Bio-psycho-social –the service takes an integrated, whole-person approach to supporting patients. Emphasis will be placed on providing social support, and integrating patients within their local communities, connecting them to relevant voluntary and community services. The intervention element of the pathway will be a suite of workshops aligned to the 6 pillars of lifestyle medicine which will be co-facilitated by a GP and Clinical Psychologist, who will draw on relevant biological and psychological practices.
• Proactive engagement – a link worker will work as part of the service to establish relationships with patients, increase accessibility (including through provision of in-person and online formats) and support effective utilisation of the service;
• Peer and professional learning – each workshop will be structured to offer space for participants to be heard, to share experiences and learn with and from each other, as well as benefitting from evidence-based guidelines and the multi-disciplinary clinical team;
• Voluntary care – voluntary care partners are being engaged to help co-facilitate and host some workshops, bringing the intervention into the community and serving as a bridge to enable patients to benefit from ongoing support from the local voluntary sector;
• Patient outcomes – following on the success of the Integrating Mental & Physical healthcare: Research, Training and Services (IMPARTS) tool to help identify and monitor mental health needs in people with physical health conditions. The PEACS programme has developed a bespoke online questionnaire called the Mind & Body Health Check that places patient-reported outcomes at the centre of the service.

If you would like any further information on the PEACS programme please contact misha.gardner@slam.nhs.uk, Assistant Project Manager, Mind & Body.