NCT02456727

Acupuncture Approaches for Chronic Pain

Acupuncture Approaches to Decrease Disparities in Outcomes of Pain Treatment - A Two Arm Comparative Effectiveness Trial

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 779 (actual)
• Sponsor: Albert Einstein College of Medicine · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 21 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Chronic pain is a major public health problem that places many burdens on individuals, including impairment of physical and psychological functioning, lost productivity, and side effects of medications used to treat pain. There is also substantial evidence that minority populations differ both in prevalence and outcomes of chronic pain; access to care is a key component in these differences. Strong evidence now supports the use of acupuncture in the treatment of chronic pain conditions, including when provided in the primary care setting to participants from ethnically diverse, medically underserved populations. Acupuncture is slowly being integrated into pain management in many conventional health care settings, but cost and reimbursement for this service remain obstacles to offering acupuncture, especially in primary care and safety net settings. Because group acupuncture can be offered at much lower cost, demonstrating that individual and group delivery are equally effective could reduce barriers to use of this effective pain management approach. The primary aim of this study will be to evaluate whether acupuncture delivered in the group setting for participants with chronic pain is equal to acupuncture delivered in the individual setting. A secondary objective will be to use qualitative analysis to understand and describe the participants' experience of both acupuncture approaches, and to utilize this data to inform intervention delivery and dissemination, to better incorporate the participants' perspective.

Conditions

• Chronic Pain
• Osteoarthritis
• Neck Pain
• Back Pain

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
PROCEDURE	Group/Community Acupuncture	Acupuncture treatment in a group setting.
PROCEDURE	Individual Acupuncture	Acupuncture treatment in an individual setting.

Timeline

• Start date: 2015-05-01
• Primary completion: 2018-03-01
• Completion: 2018-03-01
• First posted: 2015-05-28
• Last updated: 2020-09-18
• Results posted: 2020-09-18

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States