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National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health

Cooperative Pain Education and Self-Management (COPES): A Technology-Assisted Intervention for Pain

A photograph of Dr. Alicia Heapy.

Speaker: Alicia Heapy, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Yale School of Medicine

Date: June 8, 2021 - 12:00 p.m. ET to 1:00 p.m. ET

This event will be videocast; click here to add a reminder to your calendar.

NIH VideoCast

Event Description

The second talk in the spring 2021 Integrative Medicine Research Lecture Series presented by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health is by Dr. Alicia Heapy of the Yale School of Medicine/Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System. Evidence supports behavioral and self-management therapies for people with chronic pain; however, there are many obstacles to their widespread implementation and uptake. Technology offers a way to address a number of such barriers. Dr. Heapy will discuss research she is leading in the Veterans Health Administration health care system on a nondrug intervention for pain—Cooperative Pain Education and Self-Management (COPES), a form of cognitive behavioral therapy based on interactive voice response technology. Chronic pain patients can access COPES from home, and it shows promise for improved pain outcomes. Dr. Heapy will also discuss how COPES fares in comparison to in-person cognitive behavioral therapy.

Watch the event:

Speaker Bio

Alicia Heapy, Ph.D., is associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and associate director of the Pain Research, Informatics, Multimorbidities, and Education (PRIME) Center, part of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. She is Chair of the National Pain Research Working Group, comprising more than 80 VHA, Department of Defense, NIH, and other pain investigators. Her research funders include the VA, NCCIH, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute of Nursing Research, and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Dr. Heapy received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in clinical psychology from Purdue University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the VA Connecticut Healthcare System.

Learning Objectives

  1. Describe the development of a technology-assisted version of cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic pain (CBT-CP).
  2. Describe the relative strengths and weaknesses of the in-person and technology-assisted forms of CBT-CP.
  3. List some barriers to and facilitators of widespread implementation of CBT-CP.
  4. Describe the evidence for the effectiveness of COPES.