The progress which has been made in some states in the nation, in reforming the management of pain, offers guidance as to the approaches likely to be effective elsewhere. Foremost, education, demystification and demythologization, strongly displace ignorance, prejudice and dogmatism. The communication of actual patient experiences seems to best displace preconceptions. When study groups, summit meetings and governmental commissions have brought all the parties together - patients, legislators, law enforcement and medicine - exposure to repeated case histories reliably induces change in apperceptions and beliefs. Typically, when a 6 foot 4 inch, medically retired police office gives personal testimony that pain medicine allows him to function as a human being, without addiction, diversion, abuse, tolerance or sedation, the facts displace the myths. In every instance in the 30 state legislatures which have passed protective and enabling legislation for pain patients and their physicians, the momentum for change grew out of a confrontation with the realities of pain and encounters with real pain patients.

Against this background, in 1998 the original, essential goals of the National Foundation for the Treatment of Pain were:

1. To make legitimate, comprehensive, caring and state of the art pain treatment universally available to every pain patient, using all modalities of care.
   
   
2. To provide a nation-wide resource for individual pain patients who find themselves denied legitimate medical care, through referral of these patients to qualified physicians.
   
   
3. To educate professionals, the people and government about the reality of pain, and how common it really is, by bringing pain and hurt out of the closet using "spokespersons" who are well known to the public. These include athletes, movie personalities, musicians, and success stories from many other professions.
   
   
4. To demystify pain medication at the local level, and debunk the fear of "addiction", which causes immeasurable and needless suffering and disability. To use spokespersons to tell a factual and pragmatic story of the realities of pain and its management, and to replaces myth and prejudice with facts and realities, the truth being the greatest educator of them all.
   
   
5. To identify areas of need for change in public policy from direct patient calls, and to organize local colloquia, throughout the states, in collaboration with the State Medical Societies.
   
   
6. To disseminate the latest medical information through proper use of the mass media, including wide-audience daytime television shows, to support the holistic treatment of pain with every appropriate modality of care, and to promote the correct use of pain medications in chronic pain, and demonstrate that treatment is entirely safe and morally imperative, when legitimately provided.
   
   
7. To create a network of support to all in the group, through local chapters, through a nation-wide physician referral registry for patients, through an association for professional support for the doctors, and through a worldwide web site for all.
   
   
8. To support a WEB site which will provide a wide variety of resources, including chat rooms, meet the expert sessions, a National Physician Registry to assist patients in finding qualified and expert medical help throughout the nation, a Registry-network of legal specialists with a case law and Intractable Pain Act database, and electronic connections to numerous other net-available resources, of which many are under-utilized.
   
   
9. To create a nation-wide system of identifying legitimate pain patients.
   
   
10. To create a perpetual Foundation to protect the treatment of pain.

Two years later the Foundation reported on its progress by restating its goals.