Helen Slater

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Purpose of review: Chronic pain (CP) affects over 20% of youth globally. Interdisciplinary pain management is considered the best practice to support youth with CP through the involvement of physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, and psychologists, among others. Recent findings: Through the involvement of each discipline, unique yet complementary perspectives are offered to youth and their families to support their return to regular functioning. This paper describes current best practices in interdisciplinary approaches to the effective management of CP in youth. Management approaches and considerations across each discipline are presented. Summary: A case example highlights opportunities for the integration of care across disciplines. Finally, future directions for treatment delivery and research are discussed.

To explore how lived and care experiences of young people (aged 16-24 years) who experience chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) influence their choices about CMP care, and how and where a digital health solution (DHS) could support their care. A cross-sectional, exploratory qualitative study involving 20 young people (16-24 years) experiencing CMP. Eight focus groups were conducted, guided by a focus group schedule. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Three main themes emerged describing young people's experiences and CMP care choices. For each main theme we identified how a DHS could support their care: (1) "Experiences of living with and managing their CMP." A DHS could buffer self-care needs by providing timely support and creating a sense of community. (2) "Experiences with healthcare providers and healthcare services." An app-based DHS could potentially help to coordinate CMP care and support health services navigation. (3) "Young people's choices about their CMP care options." DHSs can support young people prioritize their CMP care options. Understanding young people's values, alongside their care needs is critical to delivering person-centred care. A tailored DHS can value-add to young people's CMP care by helping to minimize the burden of self-care, health service navigation and interactions with healthcare providers.

There is a critical need to upskill primary care providers to enable timely high-quality care for children, youth, and adults living with pain. Leveraging technologies has the potential to increase accessibility of pain education as part of continuing professional development. In this paper, we highlight 2 digitally enabled education strategies—Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (synchronous) and eLearning pain training (asynchronous). Emerging areas of interest for education and research are also highlighted including blended synchronous and asynchronous pain education; the use of artificial intelligence tools to create personalised and engaging eLearning experiences; and consumers as partners in the development, implementation, and evaluation of digitally enabled pain education.

Digital therapeutics (DTx) are applied healthcare technologies designed to prevent, manage, or treat health conditions. In pediatric pain, DTx can enhance access to evidence-based, effective pain assessment and management. This article explores technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR), mobile health (mHealth), and sensors (eg, smartwatches). Equitable DTx deployment can address geographic disparities by enabling on-demand pain care, necessitating an intelligent learning DTx-enabled health system. Ensuring safety will require comprehensive regulatory frameworks at national and international levels. Achieving this transformation requires robust regulatory frameworks, workforce training, and equitable codesign to ensure accessible, evidence-based care for all pediatric populations.

Introduction: Most clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for assessing and managing people’s chronic pain focus on specific pain conditions, body sites or life course stages. This creates complexity for clinicians making care choices in the absence of a diagnosis and/or where a person experiences more than one pain condition. Specific to this context is the ICD-11 classification of chronic primary pain where an experience of pain cannot be better accounted for by another condition. CPGs for chronic primary pain, agnostic to condition or body part, may support clinicians towards best pain care since many of the principles of person-centred chronic pain care are transdiagnostic. The two aims of this systematic review are to (1) identify and appraise CPGs for chronic primary pain, relevant across the life course and (2) map the CPG content against a pain care priority framework to evaluate the extent to which the CPG content aligns with the priorities of people with lived chronic pain experience. Methods and analysis: We will systematically search nine scholarly databases, the Epistemonikos database and international and national guidelines clearinghouses. CPGs published within 2015–2025, in any language, that offer recommendations about assessment and/or management of chronic primary pain for people of any age, excluding hospitalised inpatients or institutionalised populations, will be included. Pairs of reviewers will independently screen citations for eligibility and appraise CPG quality and implementation potential using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE)-II and the AGREE-Recommendations Excellence tools, respectively. Data extraction will include the citation and scope characteristics of each CPG, methods used to develop recommendations, verbatim recommendations, guiding principles or practice information and narrative excerpts related to the GRADE Evidence-to-Decision (EtD) considerations (or equivalent). We will use the PROGRESS-PLUS framework as a checklist to identify whether determinants of health equity were considered by guideline developers. CPG recommendations will be organised according to common topics and categorised in a matrix according to strength and direction. Qualitative content analysis will be used to synthesise excerpts relating to GRADE EtD considerations (or equivalent), and we will map extracted data against an established chronic pain care priority framework to determine the extent to which the CPGs align with values and preferences of people with lived experience. Interpretation will be informed by an interdisciplinary Advisory Group, including lived experience partners. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval is not required for this systematic review. Results will be disseminated through publication in an open-access peer-reviewed journal, through professional societies, and integrated into education curricula and public-facing resources. Reporting will be consistent with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) statement. PROSPERO registration number: CRD420251000482.