Background
Most strategies to reduce the burden of pain in society are downstream, managing the situation once pain has become a problem, with a lack of health promotion discourse in mainstream pain journals (Johnson et al., 2014). As human society and living conditions evolve, solutions are needed for human challenges that arise. In recent times, modern urban Anthropocene lifestyles have created unique and ever-changing living conditions, personal circumstances, building environment, access to green spaces, occupational conditions, eating options, technology innovation and lifestyle choices. This has resulted in improvements in health, well-being and the quality and duration of life, with age-standardised disability-adjusted life-years rates for global health steadily improving over the past 30 years (Diseases & Injuries, 2020). Paradoxically though, the proportion of years lived with disability from non-communicable diseases and injuries has increased over the past 30 years, with non-communicable disease and injury constituting over half of all disease burden in 11 countries, and revealing a need for better intervention strategies (Diseases & Injuries, 2020).
- exploring how non-medical perspectives may offer opportunities for improvement
Conclusions
We believe the social ecological model may help us to:
1. Better understand the concept of health and the role that the environment plays in promoting health.
2. Offer insights on the phenomenon of pain and inform strategies to reduce the burden of pain on society.
The question of how current society deals with pain and who sees pain as their responsibility have been largely neglected.
Kress and colleagues argue that the views of all stakeholders need to be involved in creating a more successful holistic approach to chronic pain management (Kress et al., 2015). Scholars and practitioners from diverse areas of expertise may offer non-medicalised perspectives to inform pain management solutions and bring a fresh agenda of required changes with the potential to provide previously ignored innovations. Consideration of broader perspectives is likely to promote better health care and lifestyle decisions for people living with persistent pain.