Experiences of Caribbean and South Asian women living with long term pain
- 31st March 2025
Our Chronic Pain Health Integration Team (HIT) and the BNSSG diverse Research Engagement Network have been supporting vital work to understand the experiences of Caribbean and South Asian women living with chronic pain.
Chronic pain is the term used for pain that continues for over three months, with or without an obvious cause.
Funding from the Network via NHS England enabled Nilaari to employ a Community Researcher – Subitha Baghirathan – to do small-scale qualitative research through one-on-one interviews with Caribbean and South Asian women.
The interviews explored the women’s experiences of their pain, including hearing about their interactions with primary health care, and how they talked about their pain with others. Themes covered included: diagnosis, treatments and therapies after being diagnosed, relationships with health professionals, support from friends and family, culture, the menopause, and impact on work and on other areas of life.
In November 2024, the HIT supported a workshop for women of colour who experience chronic pain, alongside pain services providers and researchers, to discuss what had been found.
Then in February 2025, colleagues at Health Innovation West of England and the National Centre for Integrative Medicine hosted a webinar where Subitha presented her findings to health practitioners from across the West.
Overall, this project demonstrates the value and potential impact of community based and community-led health research. It is having an ongoing impact, for example, resulting in a factsheet on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and ME being translated into Bengali for the first time in our region. The work was also cited at the national Medicines Safety Improvement Programme shared learning event in March 2025.
