Subject: Pain and non-communicable diseases
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are responsible for 80 % of the disease burden in EU countries.
Chronic primary pain is pain that is associated with significant emotional distress or functional disability and that is not better accounted for by another medical condition. Here, chronic pain is the dominant clinical problem and is considered to be a condition in its own right.
The onset of chronic primary pain is best understood as an interplay between various biological, psychological and social factors, which vary from person to person. Some examples are chronic widespread pain (such as fibromyalgia), complex regional pain syndrome and musculoskeletal pain (e.g. non-specific chronic low back pain).
Further, a scoping review on high-burden under-researched medical conditions, published by the Commission in 2023, explicitly includes conditions such as fibromyalgia (an example of chronic primary pain), and states that designing programmes for diseases and conditions such as these will help improve health and healthcare in the EU.
1. Given the close link between NCDs and chronic pain, which conditions is the Commission planning to include under its NCDs initiative, and is chronic pain among them?
2. Can the Commission guarantee that chronic pain will be adequately addressed under this or any other equivalent policy?
Submitted: 13.12.2024
Answer given by Mr Várhelyi on behalf of the European Commission
(25 February 2025)
The Commission recognises the importance of integrated patient care pathways in addressing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and associated chronic pain.
For example, the joint action JACARDI (1) on cardiovascular diseases and diabetes aims to improve patient care pathways and address all aspects of a patient’s health, including chronic pain.
The Commission will step up its efforts on preventive health ensuring a comprehensive approach to health promotion and disease prevention (2).
The first exchange of views on these new priorities was held with the Expert Group on Public Health (3) on 30 January 2025. This provided the opportunity to discuss how the Commission can best and most effectively support Member States in preventing and managing NCDs, and associated conditions like chronic pain.
The Commission recognises the need to develop solutions to efficiently tackle chronic pain. Two call topics (4) were recently opened under the Horizon Europe Programme (5) including one linked to the scoping review (6) that offered researchers in the pain area an opportunity to apply for research funding.
Horizon Europe will continue to offer opportunities for research funding, as call topics are broad enough to accommodate for pain research.
1 ∙ ⸱ https://jacardi.eu/
2 ∙ ⸱ https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/b628b5a2-ac1e-4b9c-bbdd-35b82da0ac6b_en?filename=mission-letter-varhelyi.pdf
3 ∙ ⸱ https://health.ec.europa.eu/non-communicable-diseases/expert-group-public-health_en
4 ∙ ⸱ These topics included: ‘Tackling high burden for patients, under-researched medical conditions’ https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-
tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-hlth-2024-disease-03-14-two-stage and ‘Novel approaches for palliative and end-of life care for non-cancer patients’ https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-hlth-2023-disease-03-01 5 ∙ ⸱ https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe_en 6 ∙ ⸱ https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/eae32303-96e3-11ed-b508-01aa75ed71a1/language-en