Science Communication and Policy Advocacy in Pain Research: An Interview with Dr. Lisa LaRowe 

Jessica M. Powers, PhD^1,2; Laura E. Laumann, PhD³ - Pain SIG

The Pain SIG interviewed Dr. Lisa LaRowe, a clinical psychologist and research faculty member at the Center for Optimal Aging and Serious Illness Research at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School to learn about her experiences with policy advocacy and her work disseminating pain research to a general audience.  

Pain SIG: You've done a wonderful job communicating pain science through your Substack (a free online publishing platform). What motivated you to start, and what has surprised you most? 

Dr. LaRowe: I started posting after completing the Mayday Pain and Society Fellowship, a communication and policy-focused program that trains clinicians and scientists to become more effective public advocates for improved pain care. What's surprised me most about Substack is how easy it is to use and how diverse an audience it reaches, with both academics and general community members all in one place.  

Pain SIG: What drew you to policy work through SBM, and what's been hardest about translating peer-reviewed findings for clinicians, patients, and policymakers? 

Dr. LaRowe: In my clinical work, I kept seeing how much research doesn't make it into the real world. My research focuses on chronic pain management in older adults, and even with real advances in the field, policy barriers often get in the way of older adults accessing the treatments we're developing. I believe that communicating science beyond academic audiences is critical to ensuring that research findings translate into meaningful improvements for the people they are intended to serve. In my experience, the hardest part of communicating findings with different audiences is simply the time it takes. It's also difficult to balance simplifying information so it's digestible without oversimplifying or losing important context. 

Pain SIG: How do you balance scientific hedging with the clarity that policymakers and the public need?

Dr. LaRowe: I try to ask myself what the actual message is that I want to communicate. Scientists are trained to talk about needing more research before drawing concrete conclusions, but often there's already enough evidence to land on a clear takeaway. For example, I wrote a Substack piece about a feasibility study of a virtual reality intervention for burn pain. I wouldn't conclude from that single study that VR should become standard treatment, but I could confidently connect the finding to a much broader evidence base showing that pain is shaped by psychological processes like attention, thoughts, and emotion.  

Pain SIG: What have you learned about communicating research directly to policymakers? 

Dr. LaRowe: My approach is to present things in layers, starting with the highest-level overview, since a policymaker might only spend thirty seconds with it before deciding whether they want more detail. Rather than citing a raw statistic like 38% of older adults having chronic pain, I also take the time to reframe it: nearly 4 in 10 older adults have pain that affects them more days than not. I try to tie this directly to the policy under discussion, such as why we need access to pain treatment for older adults.  

Pain SIG: What are the most persistent misconceptions about pain that you find yourself correcting? 

Dr. LaRowe: The one I correct most is the belief that pain is just a normal part of aging, a myth that persists among both patients and clinicians and can keep people from telling their doctors about pain or seeking help for it. I also often hear that chronic pain is a permanent, unchanging state, an assumption that limits research on within-person changes over time. I’ve written about each of these misconceptions on my Substack, including why pain should not be dismissed as a normal part of aging and how chronic pain is more dynamic than we often assume.

Pain SIG: What keeps you motivated given how slow policy change can be? 

Dr. LaRowe: For me, it comes down to seeing impact over time and celebrating small wins, such as a reader telling me an article helped them. Those moments are a reminder that whatever we put out there is having an impact, even when it's not visible right away. 

Pain SIG: How did you build the confidence to share your work publicly, and what would you tell an early career researcher wanting to do the same? 

Dr. LaRowe: I didn't feel confident at all when I started sharing my work publicly, and I still don't always. What keeps me going is staying focused on my "why": if the people who spend their careers studying these issues aren't sharing what they know, who is? My advice to early career researchers is that there are entry points everywhere, such as the SBM Health Policy Ambassador Program, and to just give it a shot. 

Affiliations: 

1. Assistant Scientist, Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research & Treatment, University of Kansas
2. Assistant Professor,  Department of Psychology, University of Kansas
3. Research Scientist, Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine, The Miriam Hospital