Three studies from the first cohort of NIH Collaboratory Trials in pain management supported through the NIH HEAL Initiative are nearing completion. At the NIH Collaboratory’s 2026 Annual Steering Committee Meeting, we asked investigators Natalia Morone, Andrea Cheville, and Ardith Doorenbos to reflect on their experiences in the program and to share lessons for other researchers starting their own pragmatic trials.

“A commonality across our trials was the effort we put into collecting outcomes, the shared prioritization of how critical this is, guiding each other in ways to maximize our response rates,” said Cheville, co–principal investigator for the NOHARM trial and a professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Mayo Clinic. “Also, I think our trials share an experience of using tele-care, sometimes unplanned because of the pandemic, and experiencing the benefits and the limitations of that.”

NOHARM is testing an electronic health record–embedded, bundled intervention comprised of patient- and clinician-facing decision support components that enable patients to integrate nonpharmacologic pain care into their perioperative management.

Go to the full video.

“The best advice I got…was to be flexible, and I really took that to heart,” said Morone, associate professor of medicine at Boston University and the principal investigator for the OPTIMUM trial. OPTIMUM studied the addition of mindfulness-based group telehealth visits to usual care for patients with chronic low back pain. The trial’s primary results were published last month in JAMA Internal Medicine.

“Especially with pragmatic trials, I think there are more challenges that may arise and more questions as far as how flexible you can be,” added Doorenbos. “Emphasize relationships, value your relationships, and identify the pain points, the opportunities for synergism, how to give back to the sites that are hosting the trials,” she said.

Doorenbos is a co–principal investigator for the GRACE trial and the Harriet H. Werley Endowed Chair for Nursing Research at the University of Illinois Chicago. GRACE is assessing the effectiveness of guided relaxation and acupuncture treatments to improve pain control for patients with sickle cell disease.

OPTIMUM, NOHARM, and GRACE are supported within the NIH Collaboratory through the NIH HEAL Initiative by grants awarded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and administered by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (OPTIMUM and GRACE) and the National Institute on Aging (NOHARM).

In the coming weeks, we will share more highlights from the 2026 Annual Steering Committee Meeting. Access the complete meeting materials.