A federal government funding boost will pave the way for a much-needed, tailored program for culturally diverse communities experiencing musculoskeletal pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Saurab Sharma, the Chief Clinical Scientist from the Pain Management and Research Centre at Royal North Shore Hospital, has received a National Health and Medical Research Council investigator grant to progress his research and develop an innovative treatment plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investigator grants are awarded to only a small number of leading scientists in Australia each year to advance health research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a researcher within the Kolling Institute, Dr Sharma said a specific, co-designed program is needed as culturally and linguistically diverse Australians often miss out on high quality care due to cultural, language, and health literacy barriers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThese communities are often excluded from research including clinical trials, which means evidence-based treatments are designed without their input or experiences,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUltimately, this means Australians from diverse backgrounds receive poor care and experience poorer outcomes compared to other Australians.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The $700,000 grant will support the development of a digital, pain-management treatment program for communities from Arabic, Chinese, Indian, Nepali, and Vietnamese backgrounds with musculoskeletal pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cImportantly, the program will be co-designed with individuals with lived experiences of musculoskeletal pain, healthcare professionals from respective cultural backgrounds, and world-leading musculoskeletal pain experts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur initiative aims to empower marginalised and disadvantaged communities, build research capacity within these communities, and foster a greater understanding of pain among community members and healthcare professionals to transform pain management for these vulnerable communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEncouragingly, our program could be adopted on a global scale as it will be tailored for Arabic, Cantonese, Hindi, Mandarin, Nepali, and Vietnamese languages, which are spoken by over 2.2 billion people globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA cultural and linguistic adaptation of the educational resources could benefit approximately a quarter of the world\u2019s population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe hope the pain management program will enhance health equity, reduce costs and inform national and international guidelines on musculoskeletal pain.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2485,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[44,12,13,16,15],"tags":[42,51],"research-group-tax":[],"primary-research-area":[],"class_list":["post-2484","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-funding-support","category-musculoskeletal-research","category-neuroscience-pain-research","category-new-treatment","category-research-excellence","tag-musculoskeletal","tag-pain"],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_best-one-_w550_h380_fcrop-1.webp",550,380,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_best-one-_w550_h380_fcrop-1-150x150.webp",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_best-one-_w550_h380_fcrop-1-300x207.webp",300,207,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_best-one-_w550_h380_fcrop-1.webp",550,380,false],"large":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_best-one-_w550_h380_fcrop-1.webp",550,380,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_best-one-_w550_h380_fcrop-1.webp",550,380,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/thumb_Blog_best-one-_w550_h380_fcrop-1.webp",550,380,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"ict-wordpress-support@sydney.edu.au","author_link":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/author\/ict-wordpress-supportsydney-edu-au\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"A federal government funding boost will pave the way for a much-needed, tailored program for culturally diverse communities experiencing musculoskeletal pain. Dr Saurab Sharma, the Chief Clinical Scientist from the Pain Management and Research Centre at Royal North Shore Hospital, has received a National Health and Medical Research Council investigator grant to progress his research…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5180,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2484\/revisions\/5180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2484"},{"taxonomy":"research-group-tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-group-tax?post=2484"},{"taxonomy":"primary-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kollinginstitute.org.au\/news_demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/primary-research-area?post=2484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}