Innovative Approaches for the Treatment of Chronic Pain in Youth

Laura E. Simons is a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and an attending psychologist at the pediatric pain management clinic at Stanford Children’s Health. Dr. Simons is a committed researcher and clinician with a focus on psychological assessment and development of treatment interventions to improve the lives of youth with chronic pain. Prior to joining Stanford in 2016, she was an attending psychologist/associate professor at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Over the decade she spent at BCH she worked in the chronic pain clinic, pediatric headache program, and pediatric pain rehabilitation center (PPRC).

Luana Colloca is an NIH-funded physician-scientist who conducted ground-breaking studies that have advanced scientific understanding of the psychoneurobiological bases of endogenous systems for pain modulation in humans including the discovery that the vasopressin system is involved in the enhancement of placebo effects with a dimorphic effect. Currently, her team conducts basic and translational research on genomics of orofacial chronic pain, brain mechanisms of expectancy - and observationally-induced hypoalgesia - and immersive virtual reality. Her research has been published in top-ranked international journals including Biological Psychiatry, Pain, Nature Neuroscience, JAMA, Lancet Neurology, Science and NEJM. The impact of her innovative work is clear from her outstanding publications, citation rate, numerous invited lectures worldwide and media featured by The National Geographic, The New Scientist, Washington Post, Boston Globe, The New Yorker, Nature, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, News and World Reports.