To kick off National Pain Awareness Week 2011, the Canadian Pain Coalition hosted two symposia entitled Transitions: Living Well with Chronic Pain.

The events, held in Saskatoon on November 5 and Calgary on November 6, were very successful with over 200 attendees at each location. We are emailing you today to let you know that we have updated the Live Well With Pain site with insights, videos, discussion summaries and more collected from both events.

We hope that you will find the information and resources on the site to be helpful for you in managing chronic pain more effectively. We ask that our member organizations and health professional members share this site with their members and clients so that as many Canadians as possible can benefit from the knowledge and expertise of the pain experts who were involved in the symposia.

What will people discover when visiting Live Well With Pain?

During the events, attendees participated in group workshops where they had an opportunity to brainstorm ideas for managing pain by using a pain plan. These strategies and a template of the pain plan can now be found online, as well as resources including a pain journal. We have included information about how to get involved and add your voice to the national discussion to ensure chronic pain is recognized and managed more effectively.

There are also a number of videos available online. The first is a video taken from the Calgary symposium that includes clips from the speaker presentations and relaxation session.

The second set of videos includes our pain experts answering questions submitted by event participants. This is a great video series about managing pain. We expect our members will find them interesting and helpful to watch.

We encourage you to go through the site and please share the link with anyone who is touched by pain.