Advocacy
Mayday Pain & Society Fellowship: Call for Applications for 2007
WASHINGTON D.C. (March 5, 2007)
The Mayday Fund, a New York City foundation dedicated to alleviating the incidence, degree, and consequence of human physical pain,
announced today that it will begin accepting applications for the 2007 Mayday
Pain & Society Fellowship; A Media & Policy Fellows Initiative. This is the
fourth year of the program designed to equip physicians, nurses, pharmacists,
social workers, scientists, and legal scholars with the necessary skills to become
effective advocates and spokespeople about pain issues in the United States and
Canada. Developing their communications skills, the six experts chosen will
be poised to move the field forward with their willingness to educate and work
with the media, policymakers, advocates and health and business leaders. Six
Fellows are chosen each year, and the Fellowship program runs through 2009.
Once selected, the six Fellows will attend a four-day training in Washington,
D.C. (October 22-25, 2007), developing individual advocacy plans to include connecting
with local and national media, writing opinion editorials, developing relationships
with university public affairs and government relations leadership, and talking
with state legislators and Members of Congress. Each Fellow will have five months
of coaching with a communications officer to track progress on their plans.
Mayday Fellows have succeeded in televised panel discussions, live radio and
television interviews; served as advisors to producers working on longer segments
on pain; been accepted to a policy post on Capitol Hill; published editorials
and letters to the editor, to name a few. They use the tools they received in
training to advance advocacy goals.
"I believe there is a glaring need for members of the pain management community
of all disciplines to become skilled in communicating our messages," said Steve
Passik, Ph.D., Director of the Symptom Management and Psychopharmacology Laboratory
Program at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and a 2006-07
Mayday Fellow. "By becoming active in the public discussion of pain issues we
can exert some control over how pain management is portrayed and perceived. The
Mayday Fellowship was not only eye-opening and enjoyable, but the skills I acquired
and contacts I made immediately enabled me to be a more effective advocate and
to maximize the power of my interactions with media."
The Fellowship Program is steered by an advisory committee made up of some of
the nation’s leading experts in the field. Russell Portenoy, M.D., Chairman
of the Department of Pain Medicine and Palliative Care at Beth Israel Medical
Center in New York City chairs the committee. In 2007, past Mayday Fellow Lonnie
Zeltzer, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral
Sciences, and Director of the Pediatric Pain Program at the David Geffen School
of Medicine at University of California at Los Angeles., joins the Fellowship
advisory committee.
"We continue to have success developing talented spokespeople eager to engage
stakeholders on the topic of pain," Portenoy said. "We're searching for six
more who have the capacity, time and passion to become players in the field,
and ultimately have real impact on the lives of people in pain."
The Fellows will develop skills to advocate and communicate on many of the pain
issues they know most closely including pediatric pain, chronic pain, the treatment
of pain with prescription pain medications, non-medicinal treatment for pain,
pain policy, clinical and basic science research on pain, and disparities in
treating pain.
Candidates for the Fellowship must be accomplished experts in pain management,
established at an institution with peer-reviewed research, and able and willing
to devote a significant amount of time to using the skills learned in the Fellowship.
They must show an interest in going beyond their professional pursuits to inspire
change and make an impact on the pain field.
Those interested can apply online at: http://painandhealth.org/maydayfellows/fellows.html
Established in 1992, the Mayday Fund is dedicated to further Shirley Steinman
Katzenbach’s commitment to social and medical causes. Her special interest in
the treatment of pain forms the core of the Fund’s mission. Over the last fourteen
years, Mayday has supported many different projects, among them, surveys of public
attitudes to pain and its treatment, role model and documentation programs, assistance
to public and professional advocacy groups, and clinical and academic research.
On the Advisory Committee for the Mayday Pain & Society Fellowship are Chair
Russell K. Portenoy, M.D.; James Campbell, M.D., Professor of Neurosurgery and
Vice Chairman of the Department at John Hopkins Hospital; Scott Fishman, M.D.,
Professor and Chief, Division of Pain Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology
and Pain Medicine, University of California, Davis; Kathleen M. Foley, M.D.,
Chief of the Pain Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; David E.
Joranson, MSSW, Senior Scientist and Director of the Pain and Policy Studies
Group at the University of Wisconsin Medical School; Patrick John McGrath, Ph.D.,
Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Pediatrics, Dalhousie University Medical
School; Joan Teno, M.D., M.S., Professor of Community Health and Medicine, and
Associate Director of the Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research at
the Brown Medical School; and Lonnie Zeltzer, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics,
Anesthesiology, and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, and Director of the
Pediatric Pain Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of
California at Los Angeles.
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