Caption: From left: Keynote speakers Clifford Woolf of Harvard Medical School and Beth Darnall of Stanford University School of Medicine among other pain researchers highlighted the importance of understanding the diverse nature of pain at Pain Day 2026.
By Phoebe Ingraham Renda
Photography by Rayni Shiring, University of Pittsburgh
The Pittsburgh Pain Consortium (PPC), a collaborative network of Pittsburgh-based scientists, clinicians and patients dedicated to ending pain-related suffering, hosted its second Pain Day, showcasing cutting-edge research to address pain from every angle on April 8, 2026.
The event, held at The Assembly, featured presentations from researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and Duquesne University on the latest advances in pain research, with two keynote speakers who highlighted the physical and emotional components of pain.
“There is a fundamental disconnect between what pain is and how we tend to treat it,” said Beth Darnall, professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine, and director of the Stanford Pain Relief Innovations Lab, Stanford University School of Medicine, in her presentation. “And so, pain is typically treated as a physical symptom, as a physical problem. And the reality is that pain is much more than that.”
In her presentation, “Scaling Brief Behavioral Treatment for Acute, Chronic, and Post-Surgical Pain: Evidence and Implementation,” she explained an intervention she created called Empowered Relief. She said it provides patients with a skill set that helps them manage the psychosocial burden of pain to in turn mitigate its physical symptoms.
“We know that over time these cognitive, behavioral adaptations can actually work against us and can actually be pain-facilitatory,” said Darnall. As patients calm their central nervous system, she noted, it provides a primary analgesia in a sustained fashion: “We see that it’s not just about coping—people are sleeping better, they have less fatigue.”
In his presentation, “Spontaneous Neuropathic Pain,” Clifford Woolf, professor of neurobiology, and director of the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center and the Neurobiology Program at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, reinforced the clinical need to understand why pain is so diverse.
“Chronic pain is a single entity, but I think mechanistically that is not correct and, potentially therapeutically, that may not be correct,” said Woolfe. “We need to identify exactly what mechanisms are driving pain in our patients to select the most appropriate treatment.”
His research revealed that a particular subset of damaged neurons called SSTR2 was responsible for the spontaneous onset of neuropathic-like pain. This finding may provide a new therapeutic target for patients suffering from spontaneous pain conditions, such as neuromas.
Caption: Anantha Shekhar, John and Gertrude Petersen Dean, Pitt School of Medicine, spoke to the importance of Pain Day.
“Pain is a complex condition that transcends multiple boundaries—it has a neurogenic component, there’s psychogenic components to it, there’s inflammation components and immune components,” said Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, in the event’s closing. “To really treat chronic pain conditions, it takes a complex and multidisciplinary team.”
There was a short announcement about The Virginia Kaufman Pain Research Challenge, which runs every year and provides pilot funding for pain-related research, and the day ended with a poster session and awards ceremony.