PEPR at EFIC Congress 2025

Our Director Dr. Fiona Webster will be participating at EFIC Congress 2025 in Lyon, France next week!

Fiona’s presentation, “Pain Catastrophizing: Language Matters” is part of the debate workshop entitled, “The Pain Catastrophizing Debate.”

Drawing on history and sociology, this presentation puts forward the argument that we need to pay critical attention to constructs and language, such as pain catastrophizing, that both in the scientific literature and popular culture reproduce larger gender and racial inequities, amongst others. This talk is partially based on our team's recent anonymous, cross-sectional international survey of 2,911 adult patients from 47 countries that generated rich quantitative and qualitative insights on patient responses to the term pain catastrophizing. Results from that study revealed how the term was understood to be problematic by many people living with pain insofar as they perceived it to invalidate their experiences and confer stigma.

The presentation will draw on research shared in this publication in the Journal of Pain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1526590022004187

If you are attending #EFIC2025, we hope you will join the event to participate in the debate.

WHEN: Friday, April 25, 05:45 PM – 07:15 PM
WHERE: Auditorium Lumière (Level Lumière) - Level 1, Congress Centre

Click here for more information about EFIC Congress 2025