Cindy Steinberg
Director, Policy & Advocacy US Pain Foundation
Cindy Steinberg is the Director of Policy and Advocacy for the U.S. Pain Foundation and a nationally recognized leader in pain policy. She became an advocate after sustaining a severe crush injury that left her living with severe daily back pain.
Ms. Steinberg has spent years working to ensure that the experiences and needs of people with pain are represented in state and federal health policy. In Massachusetts, she has served on Governor Charlie Baker’s Opioid Working Group and as a Commissioner on the Massachusetts Drug Formulary Commission.
Nationally, Ms. Steinberg has testified before the U.S. Senate HELP Committee, was appointed by the U.S. HHS Secretary to the Congressionally-mandated HHS Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force, and served on the NIH Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee. Her work has earned numerous honors, including the American Academy of Pain Medicine’s (AAPM) Advocacy Award and the AAPM Presidential Commendation Award, the Grunenthal Unsung Hero Award, the State Pain Initiative Champion Award, the American Pain Foundation’s Presidential Medal and a Mayday Pain & Society Fellowship.
Seminars
- Understand how patients define treatment success through improved function, independence and quality of life, rather than pain reduction alone
- Explore the benefit-risk trade-offs patients are willing to accept in exchange for meaningful improvements in daily living
- Challenge assumptions around what constitutes a clinically meaningful outcome and how these perspectives should influence trial design and regulatory decision-making
- Hear directly from patient advocates and individuals living with chronic pain on what developers should prioritize when designing the next generation of pain therapeutics
- Educating key policymakers about the unmet needs of millions of chronic pain sufferers
- Developing advocacy initiatives that have expanded payer coverage of pain treatment
- Advancing state legislation and regulation that has mandated payer pain management plans and patient access to a broader range of treatment options
- Exploring federal legislation to improve patient access to non-opioid pain treatment in Medicare
- Identifying how drug developers and patient organizations can collaborate to hasten the development of novel pain therapeutics
