Current Research

STAMP + CBT App

The STAMP + CBT App is an mHealth intervention that delivers tailored, “just-in-time” pain management education. Content is personalized based on patients' daily symptom survey responses, which help promote their insight into the factors that influence pain. The app also offers brief pain, opioid, and pain-cognitive behavioral therapy education in the form of engaging articles, videos, games, and relaxation exercises. Patients are testing the app now in a randomized pilot trial to inform its efficacy in improving cancer pain self-management.

Chronic Post-Surgical Pain Study

The CPSP (Chronic Post-Surgical Pain) Study is a prospective, mixed-methods cohort investigation of women undergoing surgery for gynecologic cancers. Our overarching goal is to characterize perioperative inflammatory changes during the surgery and postoperative symptom trajectories to identify individuals at highest risk for chronic post-surgical pain and determine the optimal timing for targeted interventions. Our interdisciplinary team brings together expertise in pain psychology, nursing symptom science, and pain neuroscience/anesthesiology, with a shared focus on cancer and post-surgical pain. The study is currently supported by the Berkman Family Fund Gynecological Oncology/Palliative Care Grants Program and the Oncology Nursing Foundation.

Cancer Pain 101

Cancer Pain 101 is a 90-minute, one-time Zoom class intended to provide introductory cancer pain management education. Using the “three-legged stool” as a framework, the class covers topics like basic physiology of pain, opioid and other medication management for cancer pain, communicating about your pain effectively, and common cancer pain coping skills.

Healing Gardens

Grounded in a biopsychosocial view of pain, which recognizes that stress, mood, beliefs, behavior, and social context influence symptoms, this mHealth intervention, Healing Gardens, integrates pain-CBT with opioid self-management education in the form of a smartphone behavioral game. The app offers brief, adaptive activities, tailored scenarios, personalized feedback, and symptom tracking at home, with options to share updates with care teams to catch pain flares sooner. By reducing travel, scheduling hurdles, and stigma, and by fitting into oncology workflows, the approach aims to lower pain and disability and improve quality of life. A planned study will refine ease of use, determine how much use is needed to help, and identify the best ways to integrate the app into routine care in order to enable scalable, more equitable cancer pain care.