• NPAC’s Executive Director, Kate Nicholson, and Board President, Juan Hincapie-Castillo, presented at the annual scientific meeting of the U.S. Association for the Study of Pain, delivering the symposium, Getting Pain on the Policy Agenda: Why Advocacy Matters and How to Do It.

• NPAC’s Executive Director addressed the Canadian Pain Society’s Annual Scientific Meeting in Ottawa.

• NPAC Community Leadership Council Member Quána Madison represented NPAC as a Lived Experience Expert at the National Institutes of Health Workshop on Advancing Health Equity in Pain Management.

• NPAC’s Executive Director Kate Nicholson spoke at the Institute of Honor’s Symposium at Washington and Lee University on Addiction and Alienation in America: Corporate Responsibility and the Opioid Crisis presenting the perspective of pain and medical ethics.

• NPAC’s Executive Director spoke as part of a web series on Navigating Careers in Research for the NIH PURPOSE project on a joint US-EU project to establish core outcome measures (COS) for research for acute pain, chronic pain, episodic pain, and acute to chronic pain translation.

• NPAC’s Executive Director participated as a panelist in the HEAL Connections Sharing Session, Communicating for Impact: Getting Your Research in the Media, a skills-building webinar designed to help train researchers to translate their work to the media.

• NPAC's Executive Director and Board Secretary, Dawn M. Gibson, kicked off the meeting of a new collective called the Pain Collaborative to Advance Equitable Value-Based Solutions by asking what it means to take an equity-based and person-centered approach to pain care.

• NPAC’s Executive Director joined Edward Freeman as a guest on his Stakeholder Podcast. Freeman is an American philosopher and professor of business administration at the Darden School of the University of Virginia known for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics.

• NPAC successfully testified to support the removal of the Opioid Dosage Threshold for Chronic Noncancer Pain from 2026 Quality Standards for the MEDICAID/CHIP program due to the risk of patient harm. The MEDICAID/CHIP advisory committee voted to remove this provision.

• NPAC partnered with other disability rights organizations to oppose the Census Bureau's proposal to change questions about disability in the 2025 census. The new questions were likely to reduce current estimates of people living with disabilities in the US in ways that could undermine everything from funding to services. The Census Bureau agreed to retain the current questions for 2025.

• NPAC’s Executive Director spoke at the 5th Annual NIH HEAL Initiative Scientific Meeting on the importance oftranslating and disseminating science to people living with pain and their families.

• NPAC’s Executive Director participated in her first two-day meeting as a provisional appointee to the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council (Council). The National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke oversees most NIH pain research.

• NPAC worked with lawyers at the Legal Action Center on how to evaluate legal claims related to healthcare abandonment and termination of opioids in people taking them for pain.

• NPAC collaborated with Spondylitis Association to deliver the Health Equity Symposium: "The Global & Intersectional Experience of Pain." The symposium was delivered by NPAC Science and Policy Advisors Dr. Samina Ali, Dr. Tamara Baker, Dr. Monica Mallampalli, and Executive Director Kate Nicholson.

• NPAC’s ED met with policymakers on Capitol Hill regarding recent federal legislation related to pain

• As part of ongoing implementation efforts for S.B. 144, a Colorado law protecting people with pain who require opioids, NPAC’s ED published The Last Word in Colorado Medicine, the magazine of the Colorado Medical Society

• NPAC submitted a formal comment in response to the HHS proposed rule updating the regulation under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The comment addressed discrimination in medical treatment.

• NPAC submitted formal comments opposing the DEA’s proposal to reduce the medical supply of opioids for the 8th consecutive year. 

• NPAC drafted talking points that were distributed to the harm reduction/drug policy community on the DEA’s proposed rule urging public comment. 

• NPAC submitted a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate HELP Committee in Support of the Advancing Research for Chronic Pain Act and advising the committee on discrimination against people with pain.