Racial and ethnic disparities in pain prevalence in the U.S. are far larger than previously realized, according to the results of a new study co-written by a University at Buffalo medical sociologist.
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Chronic pain is becoming more common in the United States
Americans are in chronic pain, and a comprehensive new study exploring trends in this major public health concern reveals that what has been a long-standing and under-acknowledged problem is getting substantially worse.
The findings, published in the latest issue of the journal
Demography, suggest blanket increases across multiple measures, with pain rising in every adult age group, in every demographic group, and at every site of pain for which data exists.
People today are experiencing more pain than individuals of the same age in earlier decades. In fact, each subsequent birth group is in greater pain than the one that came before it.
The findings, published in the journal
Demography, suggest blanket increases across multiple measures, with pain rising in every adult age group, in every demographic group, and at every site of pain for which data exists.
People today experience more pain than people of the same age in earlier decades. In fact, each subsequent birth group is in greater pain than the one that came before it.
“We looked at the data from every available perspective including age, gender, race, ethnicity, education, and income, but the results were always the same: There was an increase in pain no matter how we classified the population,” says coauthor Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk, associate professor of sociology in the University at Buffalo.