| NCCIH Director, Dr. Helene M. Langevin, wrote the March 28, 2023 guest post for the NIH Director's Blog: "A Whole Person Approach to Lifting the Burden of Chronic Pain Among Service Members and Veterans" Chronic pain and its companion crisis of opioid misuse have taken a terrible toll on Americans. But the impact has been even greater on U.S. service members and veterans, who often deal with the compounded factors of service-related injuries and traumatic stress. For example, among soldiers in a leading U.S. Army unit, 44 percent had chronic pain and 15 percent used opioids after a combat deployment. That compares to 26 percent and 4 percent, respectively, in the general population [1,2]. This disproportionate burden of chronic pain among veterans [3] and service members led NIHs National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) to act. Weforged a collaboration in 2017across NIH, U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to establish thePain Management Collaboratory (PMC). | 