No, there is no charge for you to access the painTRAINER program.

Research has shown that painTRAINER and pain coping skills are effective in helping people manage their pain from conditions such as cancer and osteoarthritis. The benefits include improved pain, increased ability to perform day-to-day activities, and greater confidence to manage pain.

This program was first developed by experienced health care professionals and research scientists, led by Dr. Christine Rini at Northwestern University (Chicago, IL, U.S.A.) and Dr. Francis Keefe at Duke University (Durham, NC, U.S.A.). The painTRAINER program is a collaboration between these researchers, with assistance from other researchers, experts in web-based health programs, experts in pain and coping skills, and a team of software engineers and designers. The current, updated program was created by Dr. Christine Rini and Dr. Francis Keefe in collaboration with researchers at the Centre for Health, Exercise and Sports Medicine, Department of Physiotherapy, University of Melbourne, Australia, led by Professors Kim Bennell and Rana Hinman.

This program was first developed with funding by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Grant Number R01AR057346). The current, updated program has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council Centre of Research Excellence in Translational Research in Musculoskeletal Pain, Australia (Grant Number 1079078) and the Department of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

The painTRAINER name and logo are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (Serial Numbers 87800206 and 88163552) and are owned by Duke University and Hackensack University Medical Center.

Information and skills training provided by painTRAINER is not meant to be a substitute for seeking medical care.  If you are having very severe pain that does not respond to treatment, if you feel very down, discouraged, depressed or very anxious, or if you have other symptoms that concern you, you should seek help from your regular healthcare provider.

The painTRAINER program is not appropriate for crisis help.

Activity responses are not monitored by painTRAINER. In case of an emergency within the United States, please call 9-1-1 or go to an emergency room. Outside the United States, please contact your country’s emergency services or go to an emergency room.

None of the information you provide in painTRAINER will identify you. Any information will be used to help us understand who is using the program and how beneficial people have found it.

We are legally obligated to protect the integrity of your personal information. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information.

If you need immediate help with a medical problem or mental health problem, it is very important that you contact your regular healthcare provider. In case of an emergency within the United States, please call 9-1-1 or go to an emergency room. Outside the United States, please contact your country’s emergency services or go to an emergency room.

We encourage that researchers contact painTRAINER@northwestern.edu to notify the painTRAINER team that you intend to use painTRAINER for one of your research studies/trials. The painTRAINER program is freely available for researchers to use and we are even happy to provide a research-based registration at no cost. This helps us to better measure the impact and reach of the painTRAINER platform. Additional services are available at a cost such as analytics reports for capturing numerous variables (e.g. session completion, session time, total time) for your participants that you may discuss by contacting our team. The painTRAINER team will not share any information of users that are not associated with your study.