With the launch of the Interagency Pain Research Portfolio (IPRP), the public and clinicians can now gather information from more than 1,200 federally funded research projects. The database is the brainchild of the NIH and the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (IPRCC).
The IPRCC is made up of 6 government agencies and was created by the HHS to foster collaboration across the government with the goals of advancing a fundamental understanding of pain and improving pain-related treatment strategies. The Office of Pain Policy at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) manages the database.
Research projects are categorized into 2 tiers of topic areas. Tier 1 is broad: basic, translational, and clinical research. Tier 2 comprises 29 specific topics that, according to IPRP, are “uniquely relevant to pain and meaningful to the broad range of agency missions and the needs recognized by the pain research community.”
The database will be “an important tool,” said Linda Porter, PhD, policy advisor for pain at NINDS, as a “research portfolio in which contributions from federal agencies and departments reflect their unique missions and the populations that they serve."