Acupuncture Approaches for Chronic Pain
CompletedNot applicableNCT02456727
View the official record on ClinicalTrials.gov Recruiting status changes often. Contact the study team listed on ClinicalTrials.gov, and talk to your doctor before joining a study.
This study has no listed site in Canada in this snapshot. It is included as part of the worldwide chronic pain corpus.
Brief summary (from the registry)
Chronic pain is a major public health problem that places many burdens on individuals, including impairment of physical and psychological functioning, lost productivity, and side effects of medications used to treat pain. There is also substantial evidence that minority populations differ both in prevalence and outcomes of chronic pain; access to care is a key component in these differences. Strong evidence now supports the use of acupuncture in the treatment of chronic pain conditions, including when provided in the primary care setting to participants from ethnically diverse, medically underserved populations. Acupuncture is slowly being integrated into pain management in many conventional health care settings, but cost and reimbursement for this service remain obstacles to offering acupuncture, especially in primary care and safety net settings. Because group acupuncture can be offered at much lower cost, demonstrating that individual and group delivery are equally effective could reduce barriers to use of this effective pain management approach. The primary aim of this study will be to evaluate whether acupuncture delivered in the group setting for participants with chronic pain is equal to acupuncture delivered in the individual setting. A secondary objective will be to use qualitative analysis to understand and describe the participants' experience of both acupuncture approaches, and to utilize this data to inform intervention delivery and dissemination, to better incorporate the participants' perspective.
Study details
- Official title
- Acupuncture Approaches to Decrease Disparities in Outcomes of Pain Treatment - A Two Arm Comparative Effectiveness Trial
- Interventions
- Procedure: Group/Community Acupuncture
- Procedure: Individual Acupuncture
- Sponsor
- Albert Einstein College of Medicine
- Collaborators
- Montefiore Medical Center; Mount Sinai Beth Israel Department of Integrated Medicine; Pacific College of Oriental Medicine; Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute
- Start date
- 2015-05
- Primary completion
- 2018-03
- Sex
- All
- Age range
- from 21 Years
- Healthy volunteers
- true
- Results posted
- Yes, on ClinicalTrials.gov
- Countries
- United States
- Total sites listed
- 1
Eligibility criteria
Show eligibility criteria (verbatim from the registry)
Inclusion Criteria: * Referred by a primary care provider from one of our participating primary care health centers * Provider-documented diagnosis of osteoarthritis (any joint), neck pain, OR back pain * Self-reported pain score of ≥4 for at least 3 months prior to program entry * Able to provide consent for treatment and data collection in either English or Spanish Exclusion Criteria: * \< 21 years of age * Chronic pain not documented OR self reported pain of ≥4 for less than 3 months. * Currently taking oral or injectable anticoagulants. * Lack of contact information OR unavailable for duration of entire treatment period (24 weeks) * Inability to consent to treatment and data collection. * Active psychosis * Active substance abuse
Source: ClinicalTrials.gov (US National Library of Medicine), snapshot October 2026. Check the registry for current recruiting status. Record: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT02456727