One of the areas of focus on Out Front Ideaswith Kimberly and Mark has been addressing chronic painwithout opioids. The workers' compensation industry's approach tochronic pain historically has been trying drugs and other medicalprocedures first. Then, if the pain has not subsided or hasworsened, we look for psychological factors. If we truly want tohelp injured workers in pain and prevent opioid abuse and otherunnecessary measures, we need to reverse that protocol. To learnmore, we spoke with two of the nation's most highly respected painmanagement experts, Prof. Beth Darnell and Dr. Steve Stanos, whogave us great insights into the experience of pain, how it can bebest treated, and non-pharmaceutical ways to treat pain.

Prof. Darnell is a clinical associate professor in the Division ofPain Medicine at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.; aclinical pain psychologist at the Stanford Pain Management Center;an NIH-funded scientist doing research on psychological treatmentfor chronic pain; one of the co-chairs of the Pain Psychology TaskForce at the American Academy of Pain Medicine; one of theco-authors of the 2017 Chronic Pain Guideline updates from theAmerican College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine; andthe author of multiple books on the subject.

Dr. Stanos is the medical director of Pain ManagementServices for the Swedish Medical System in Seattle and runs thepain services for five hospitals in the system; the director ofOccupational Medicine Services at Swedish; the president of theAmerican Academy of Pain Medicine; and the medical director formyMatrixx. He was also a reviewer for the CDC's Guidelines forOpioid Management, and was involved in the National PainStrategy.