Bloomberg Nursing professor receives Mayday fellowship in pain management

12 September 2011

The Mayday Fund has selected Bloomberg Nursing associate professor Dr. Jennifer Stinson, 0T6 PhD, to be a fellow under the Mayday Pain & Society. She is one of six experts in pain management to receive the honour.

Stinson’s major clinical research interests are in the area of pain and symptom management, and the use of e-health technologies to improve the assessment and management of pain and other symptoms in children with chronic illnesses. She developed and tested a multidimensional electronic pain diary for children with chronic pain for her PhD dissertation. During her post-doctoral work, funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, she developed and evaluated an Internet-based self-management program for adolescents with arthritis. Stinson, a nurse clinician scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children, also recently received a Career Scientist Award from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for her research on using e-health to promote chronic disease self-management in youth with chronic health conditions.

Established in 2004, the highly competitive fellowship provides leaders in the pain management field with tools and skills to advocate on behalf of better treatment for pain. Fellows hail from across the United States and Canada, specializing in a wide range of health care disciplines, including anaesthesiology, health care policy, nursing, pediatrics and pharmacy. Through the program, they learn how to better communicate to media and policymakers, and raise visibility for their issues.

As part of their training, the new fellows will attend an intensive four-day workshop in Washington, DC in October 2011, and work closely with a public relations firm that works solely with non-profit organizations, primarily in health and science.  Fellows will learn how to connect with local and national media, write opinion editorials, develop relationships with university public affairs and government relations leaders, and talk with policymakers. By improving their communications skills, the candidates will be poised to move the field forward.