The National Football League (NFL) and the National Football League Players Association’s (NFLPA) Joint Pain Management Committee awarded Emory University a $200,000 grant to research and develop pain management solutions for highly competitive and professional athletes in June. The study began in July and is expected to last two years.
The project is led byand Emory University School of Medicine Department of Orthopaedics Associate Professor and Grady Memorial Hospital Chief of Orthopedics and Director of Surgical Informatics Mara Schenker.
Additionally, Christopher Wolf Crusade Founder and CEO Cammie Wolf Rice is helping lead this research. The nonprofit aims to address the opioid crisis by supporting clinical interventions, education and policies and has partnered with Emory in the past to train life care specialists.
The clinical trial will examine pain management strategies before and after surgeries beyond intense pain medication in elite professional athletes. This includes mindfulness-based intervention, which Giordano said could likely improve patient postoperative recovery.
Athletes outside the NFL will not be eligible as participants for the study because of the league’s direct involvement. However, Giordano said he believes NFL players will benefit from the study’s findings.
Rice said mindfulness-based intervention techniques can significantly help patients with the anxieties of pain and surgery.
“We use coaches for everything in our society,” Rice said. “And it’s now time to have a coach when you’re in a health crisis.”
Schenker said she was glad that Emory could deliver a unique approach to this study.
“There are not a lot of behavioral-based people who are dedicated specifically to helping patients manage their pain, and it doesn’t really exist at any other institution across the country,” Schenker said. “They liked the approach that we were taking … and they put their faith in us.”
All study subjects are scheduled for surgery and most will likely be discharged with some sort of opioid-based medication. Christopher Wolf Crusade life care specialists will then introduce the subjects to additional treatments — specifically mindfulness and meditation interventions — and discuss opioid risk mitigation. Some patients will see the life care specialists in person, while others will attend telehealth appointments.
Giordano added that the study’s goal is for patients to feel confident that they can supplement their opioid medication with evidence-based mindfulness and meditation skills, therefore preventing chronic pain development and long-term opioid use.
“When they’re on the post-discharge side of surgery, they can start implementing these skills and really understand and recognize the symptoms of what’s manageable pain and what’s not so manageable and when they may need to reevaluate their relationship with their medications,” Giordano said.
Schenker noted that this study can help combat the opioid epidemic in the United States, which she called a “massive” problem.
The grant will mainly go toward research coordinators, life care specialists and participants, who all be compensated for their time in the study, according to Giordano. Over the two-year study, the goal is to recruit about 150 sports medicine patients and follow them out to three months after surgery.
Rice said she is honored that her organization will collaborate with Emory on this study to explore innovative pain management strategies with the NFL grant.
“It's a unique and wonderful collaboration that a university at Emory’s size [is] partnering with a nonprofit in the community,” Rice said. “That's what it takes is, really, innovation. And Emory does incredible research.”
