Fenan Rassu
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Chronic low back pain is one of the most common long-term health problems. Pain psychology is a proven first-line treatment that teaches patients psychological skills for living with and reducing pain.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
chronic low back pain
cLBP
chronic pain
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2029
What they work on
- Measure how socioeconomic status affects use of pain psychology among patients with chronic low back pain, using a retrospective analysis of data from a multi-site trial in Baltimore and Salt Lake City.
- Identify barriers to and facilitators of pain psychology care through qualitative interviews with psychologists and with patients from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
- Develop the EPPAC intervention, a patient-centered program that uses shared decision-making and motivational interviewing to help patients engage with pain psychology.
- Pilot EPPAC against usual care in low-SES patients with chronic low back pain, testing whether it is acceptable, feasible to deliver, and shows early signs of benefit.
More about the research
Yet people from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, meaning lower income, education or job security, use it far less often. That gap adds to health disparities. This career development project asks why the gap exists and tests a way to close it.
Why it matters
People from low-income and other low-SES backgrounds with chronic low back pain often miss out on pain psychology, an effective treatment. By showing how socioeconomic status limits access and testing a patient-centered approach to bridge it, this work could help clinics bring evidence-based pain care to underserved patients and reduce pain-related health disparities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Cristina Sarmiento
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Explore with qualitative methods what primary care providers need from CPC2U, an online health tool for adults with cerebral palsy, and what affects its use in practice.
Larry Jackson
Duke University, NC·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Interview Black and White patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation and their clinicians to identify barriers to and facilitators of shared decision making about oral anticoagulants, the blood thinners that prevent stroke.
Emily Zale
Binghamton University, NY·Psychology
Develop and refine telehealth protocols for a pain-targeted motivational smoking intervention and a time-matched active control, using iterative feedback from three groups of smokers with chronic pain not ready to quit.
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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